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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



LEGENDS OF THE 
NEW WORLD 



BY 

WILLIAM H. BABCOCK 
h 




BOSTON 

RICHARD G. BADGER 

THE GORHAM PRESS 



Copyright, 19 19, by William H. Babcock 



All Rights Reserved 

-A 



\ 



<\ 



Made in the United States of America 



The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A, 

JUL -6 I9is 
©CI. A 53 0088 



^ 



CONTENTS 

LEGENDS OF THE NEW WORLD 

The Cruise of the Essex 
The Quakeress . . 
The Book of Death 
The Story of Alvar 
The Vale of Avoca 
Elkin Hay . . 
Elizabeth of Mendota 
The Lights of Marblehead 

POEMS OF MEDITATION 

The Counsel of the Hills 

Looking Beyond 

For the Splendor of the World 

Heritage 

The Voyage of St. Brandan . 

The Burden of 1898 

Waiting for Day 

Walt Whitman 

Transvaal 

Lark and Nightingale .... 
Edgar Poe's Grave 



PAGE 

9 

41 

49 
56 

65 
70 

83 
120 



125 

131 

135 

137 

139 
149 

151 
152 
iS3 
1 54 
155 



PROEM 

Full twenty leagues of ribbon-like lagoon 
And barren sand-wall guarding from the sea: 

Eastward the deep surf booms and many a dune 
Waves its dry grasses where the wind sweeps 
free. 

Westward the woodlands darken, and the moon 
Touches quaint eves of home and hostelry. 

A world of dreams and slumbers; for no tide 
Stirs the dim pulses of this landlocked mere: 

A shore of dreams and slumbers, overdyed 
With shifting greys on drapery dull and sere: 

Where the still red-fox will not seek to hide, 
And querulous terns are hovering all the year. 

A patient world, not lonely; for it waits 

Careless of man, and takes him ; though he come 

With eyes of love and worship, or through gates 
Of rattling storm-land hurled afar and numb ; 

Or idling even as we. It hath no hates, 
It knows no love nor lord ; and it is dumb. 

Yet in the glimmering void a fire will wake 
Round the light-dipping hand or trailing oar; 

A formless glory, quivering off to break 
And melt and vanish on the watery floor. 

Even so, in trancing starlight, would I make 
The dread fire waken in the tales of yore. 



LEGENDS OF THE NEW WORLD 



THE CRUISE OF THE ESSEX 

In the days when our western power of the sea was 
yet in the making, 

When heroes, a handful, battled the thousand- 
plumed victors of ocean 

In a wonderful world half known, wide waste of 
the haze-hung waters. 

Out of the stress of the time the forms ever young 
and eternal — 

The wanderer lured by romance, the champion god- 
like in prowess, 

Eager and strenuous loom, as of old by the bright 
iEgean, 

Or where tall Northman crews drove stormward 
behind their Raven, 

Wild-eyed and merry of heart, with hair that 
streamed in the onset. 

Forth from her leaguered port our gallant frigate 
the Essex 

Flew with white wing o'er the main, dipped through 
the whirl of the tempest, 

Paused and swooped and sped on, elate with her 
burden entaloned — 

Cruiser of war full armed or ample freighter of 
commerce. 

Ever by many a shore for her consorts three she was 
seeking — 

Ever by Afric isle with its age-worn fortalice crum- 
bling, 

9 



Legends of the New World 



Ever by hot Brazil of the diamond sands and the 

palm-trees : 
(For the Indies afar were they set, strange land of 

spice and pagoda) 
But never that greeting befell and the quest was 

endless and weary. 

Voicing the heart of all, outspoke the laurelled, the 
leader, 

Porter the heedful and brave the frank and wily 
and fervid, 

Passioned with rare emprize and the subtle spells 
of the ocean, 

But still self-bearing as one with whom great issues 
abided, 

Just in his sternest mood and great and kingly of 
spirit. 

"Lost are our comrades to us, mayhap to their coun- 
try and service. 

Not for our loneness may we, being trim and ready 
for battle, 

Loiter on barren shores, till bitter ill chance has 
befallen. 

Yonder the sunbright seas with multitudinous booty 

And each ineffable charm of delight and achieve- 
ment allure us. 

There lies the Spanish main, the tawny, the storied, 
the golden, 

The galleon-haunted shore, aforetime the harvest of 
glory. 

Again shall our swift keel wake old thrills of 
abounding adventure 

10 



Legends of the New World 



And the mariner's revels be crowned by the wealth 

of rovers and princes. 
Grim are the frowns of the Cape, but kind are the 

island beauties. ,, 



Answered with swift acclaim the eagle hearts of 

the Essex. 
Gaily the sails outflew, southward their burden 

bearing, 
Meeting and greeting the cold and the wrath of the 

cape of terror, 
Struggling through doubtful days, while the sea 

and the sky warred on them, 
The teeth of the rocks and the ice hungrily ever 

in waiting, 
Then into genial scenes they rode on softening 

breezes. 

Keen through the warm new sea they darted hither 
and thither, 

Out of the perfect calm a swift irruption of terror, 

Winning great store of spoil and sowing destruction 
behind them, 

But setting the captive free and speeding the hope 
of their people, 

Now in that strangest world of the lost isles the 
Gallipagoes, 

Full of fantastical shapes waddling crude-born out 
of chaos, 

The giant-tortoise land heir of blind regions forgot- 
ten, 

II 



Legends of the New World 



Now in the Chilian bay whence newly the foreign 
bigot 

Fearful had fled, and the flush of stalwart waken- 
ing vigor 

Welcomed the viking crew as allies and comrade- 
freemen ; 

While through the balmy night the velvet-eyed 
senoritas 

Vied in mirth and in song and gay luxuriant 
dances. 

Or again by the Inca shore, where the fleet vice- 
regal corsair 

Bowed her banner and pride, yielding her fangs to 
the ocean. 

But the still assault of the sea, corrosion of wave 

and of weather, 
Left them in evil case, with urgent need of a 

haven ; 
Hovering, shunning espial, and the ruinous fate of 

the helpless. 

Hope cast anchor, that held, in a floating dream of 
the sunset, 

Of westering land far-seen and lost and found and 
forgotten, 

Of clustering mountain isles and soft traditions of 
Eden. 

Quoth one: "If they seek us there, they will seek 
us also in Heaven. " 

Far from the knowledge of men flew the wayward- 
wandering Essex. 

12 



Legends of the New World 



Wing-worn, enamoured of rest, they came to the 
isle Nooaheevah. 

A snow-white drift they came where life forever 
was drifting. 

Supple forms from the beach, bright-robed or nude 
to the billows 

Outward gazed in disquiet, warming to friendliest 
welcome : — 

Children of fluttering foam and of leaf-shadows 
fairily dancing, 

Under the breadfruit globes they poised, they pos- 
tured allurement, 

Over the valley sward beckoning nymph-like they 
fled in their laughter ; 

Loitered through feathery glooms of the tall bam- 
boo by the margin 

Of vine-hung intricate forest or gorgeous-blooming 
morasses, 

Rich in their succulent green ; where the white robes 
beaten and flossy, 

Shone like the egret's plume and deep eyes were 
gleaming and longing. 

There by the broad smooth bay in the ocean-scent- 
ed breezes 

Dwelt the wanderers long mid the tufted shadows 
of palm-trees; 

Garnering all they should need for sea-days wait- 
ing before them, 

Garnering marvellous tales for distant harbor and 
roadstead, 

Sinking or seeming to sink in the soft enfolding of 
nature. 

13 



Legends of the New World 



Yet were there clangorous blows where the ships 
careening besought them 

Unkempt in their hampering crust and raggedly 
scarred by the surges. 

Also a fair town grew, stout-walled and with ban- 
nered portal, 

And all things ordered well, behooving men of their 
birthright. 

Thither repaired full oft the olive tribesmen of 

Tayeh 
Welcomers first to the isle, shorefolk and friends 

of the stranger; 
Thither their wise old chief the burden-browed 

mild Gattaneewa, 
Line-wrought from head to heel like the wave- 
wood of dark Honduras; 
Thither came Mouina, the war-lord, redoubtable 

spearman, 
Tallest and goodliest he where all were of stature 

and goodly 
And ever his scarlet cloak was the banner of 

vehement onset. 
But now there was truce in the isle, with freedom 

of woodland ranging. 

Idly abroad at noon, Porter the musing commander 
Knew a presence before him, love-bright and such 

as men bow to, 
Stately and goddess-swift and moving to unheard 

music. 

14 



Legends of the New World 



Forthright and fearless she came, with eyes bent on 
him discerning, 

Caught the flush of his cheek, the lightening sud- 
den and eager, 

Swerved aloof and was gone, the leaf-screen joining 
behind her: — 

Only a flutter of white, a quivering petal of color, 

A rustle of boughs to tell of Taleyah princess of 
Appah. 

Peace fled with her, the morrow wakened with war- 
shouts and lances. 

Motley, gay-flowering the hills, or naked as shad- 
ows of fury, 

Down from their airy home, their high invincible 
fastness, 

Angered by rumor of wrong, athirst for the plen- 
teous booty, 

Warriors of Appah were crowding, eager, derisive, 
defiant. 

Before them the bread-fruit trees were falling, a 
portent of famine, 

And the souls of the Taveh were sad and sore and 
daunted within them. 

Bore through the press Mouina, his plumes wild- 
tossing behind him. 

Flinging abroad his arm : "Behold !— Why linger, 

Opotee ? 
Brothers are we? — Then strike in our cause and 

scatter and slay them. ,, 

15 



Legends of the New World 



Sternly the white chief heard his rude imperious 
chiding, 

Wont from old to utter commands, yet rarely en- 
dure them: 

Loth moreover to slay. "This ill becomes you 
Mouina," 

Quoth he: "In my hand I hold the choice of peace 
or of battle; 

And when I will I choose, nor hasten for any 
brawling." 

Flushed Mouina wrathful, turning with scorn un- 
hidden. 

Glossy dark to the eye were his circlets of arm and 
of ankle: 

Burned in the sun his cloak, swirling firelike about 
him; 

The spear-blade quivered and shone over the toss- 
ing feathers. 

There by the verge of the throng he halted and 
flung behind him 

Angry and taunting words, the depth of bitter 
contemning. 

Fury swift and wild seized on the sea-king derided. 

Weapon-snatching he sprang, then cast it clanging 
beside him, 

Laughing bitter and low in the instant ebb of his 
passion ; 

Shamed to be wroth with a soul in the dusk of its 
infancy groping, 

More than shamed to have sought the life of the 
heart that had welcomed. 

16 



Legends of the New World 



Loyally then he sent this warning to warlike Appah. 
"Hold you aloof from the valley, lest some great 

evil befall you: 
Or come but in brotherly barter for all the desires of 

your people. ,, 

But they laughed his herald to scorn; sending for 

answer: "O moonfolk, 
Rather we seek with no traffic the treasure you 

bring us unbidden. 
Man unto man we would test the power of your 

weapons, unfearing; 
Trusting to those we have tried, as our fathers 

trusted before us." 

Silent, a cannon was set, lifting loftily seaward. 
Round it, vivid, elate, clustered the olive-hued 

allies, 
Watching the bird go forth and sail at east o'er the 

billows, 
Unswerving, high in air, w r ith faint far plunge in 

the ocean. 
Lower the aim, and their concourse laughed and 

shouted together, 
With eyes on the skipping globe, as it smote the 

green and rebounded. 
But most of all they rejoiced, with gay delighted 

prevision, 
When the grape-shot springing abroad into foam- 
tatters rended the water. 
Down by the side of the gun they flung them with 

fondest caresses, 

17 



Legends of the New World 



Lifted with praise of its weight, calling it "strong," 

the earth clinging. 
Holding it well aloft, bore it afar to the mountain : 
For such was the sea-chief's will and the battle was 

set for the morrow. 
Porter abode by the ships, but he gave of his best 

for their leader — 
Downes whom they called Onow, the stalwart, the 

dogged and daring. 
Wearily plodded the hours with their scant allot- 
ment of tidings, 
Shadows of this and of that, rumour to fatten on 

rumour. 
Hither and thither he roved, unquiet, unsated of 

vision. 

Thus it befel that the heart of that slumbrous and 

mystical season, 
Soft mid-afternoon, welcomed him floating and 

lonely, 
Poised in a fairy realm scarce clearer above than 

below him. 
Lightly the quivering shell swayed w T ith his easiest 

motion, 
Languid lift of the blade or delicate zephyrous 

kisses. 
Dainty the trailing fringe leaf-curtaining comrades 

and harbor. 
Dreamlike the floating sounds, mingling, stilly ex- 
pectant, 
Wariest rumble and creak, merriment, murmur of 

voices 

18 



Legends of the New World 



Broken or half withheld, as of men when a thought 
bears on them, 

But never an echo astir of flight or of firm with- 
standing. 

All the tenuous mere was vivid with tinted coral, 

Fan-like, fern-like, flower-like, changeful parterres 
of the ocean; 

Pinnacles too and domes, minarets jewel-encrusted, 

Cavernous cliff and trellise, thicket of frostwork in- 
woven, 

Splendor thronging on splendor, many-hued marvels 
of beauty. 

Soft came his breath as in sleep, dreamland en- 
thralled and possessed him 

Strangely in magical light the forms necromantic 
uncertain 

Poured through the gate of the eye, flooding and 
chaining his spirit. 

Suddenly, not from afar, woke a ripple of w T ave and 
of laughter, 

Such as the sea-nymphs may use or fays of the flut- 
tering woodland, 

Beyond all music of woods, and he lifted his eyes 
and beheld her. 

Whence had she come to his side with no herald 
of sound or of vision? 

Smooth and perfect the clearness lay all about and 
below them; 

Not the least beading of foam nor aught that could 
serve for a token! 

*9 



Legends of the New World 



Only the airy poise of the blade and its dainty ca- 
resses, 

Lightly then cast by her side, in a dance of clatter 
and challenge, 

Only the foamy robe, loosened from waist and from 
shoulder, 

Airily tossed on the prow with the careless grace of 
her people. 

Hinted of sway and stroke and some slight warm- 
ing of effort. 

Nude to the waist she leaned, a goddess lovely and 

lucent, 
Supple as wrestling wave and the kiss of the foam 

could make her 
Vivid and queenlike with mountain air and the sun 

and the breezes. 

Golden glints and gleams played on the round of 

her beauty. 
Ruddy lights shot up alive from the glory beneath 

her. 
Deeper far deeper the eye through vistas fairly 

broken 
Followed delights untold and scenes that no fancy 

hath fashioned. 

Lowly she leaned her down, her fingers the soft 

wave dimpling, 
Smiling in ambushed mirth, her lips yet lovely with 

laughter, 

20 



Legends of the New World 



Kindly her deep brown eyes in their bliss of perfect 

contentment, 
There in the coralline bay — Taleyah princess of 

Appah ! 

Boat unto boat drew near, with never a motion of 
oaring, 

Drifting as magnets drift, idly floating together. 

Ah but her eyes knew well ! — and laughed and wel- 
comed and triumphed: 

Eyes that had been so chill, so set and proudly re- 
pellant ! 

Faintly came through the haze goldenly veiling his 
spirit 

A ray of wonder and doubt, but vast was the power 
of that tempting. 

Suddenly lifted her head, then sank but with hark- 

ening feature: 
Nought had come to his ear, yet likewise he wak- 
ened and harkened. 
Pleadingly broke her speech, headlong, importunate, 

fervid 
As of one whose moments are few and clamor for 

speed and for urgence 
Yet was it music to hear and he gathered the heart 

of its burden. 
Gesture and tone and glance made proffer of love 

unbounded 
To him her god of the sea, her hero, her glorious 

ally. 

21 



Legends of the New World 



Doubtfully heard while she spoke were the sounds 
that had wrought on her spirit, 

Plainlier soon, though afar, — tumult of whooping 
and shouting, 

Scatter of musketry fire and manifold howitzer- 
echoes. 

Suddenly turning thereat, she grappled his arm in 
a tremor. 



Then all the mirth that was growing within him 
awoke into laughter. 

"What, are they giving way?" quoth he. "And the 
great gun affrights you? 

— Driving you here to be friends ere worse should 
come of the quarrel? 

Thanks to my interceder, beyond all children of 
cannon ! 

Bid now your people be wise and peace will follow 
their yielding. 

But whether in peace or war let strife be never be- 
tween us, 

Between Opotee the sea-chief and the sunbright 
goddess Taleeyah! ,, 

Wary she eyed him, she listened, wise in all word- 
less communing, 

Language of finger and tone, lip-play and brow-play 
and gesture. 

Drew them away out of touch, haughty in frown- 
ing resentment; 

Spurned her light craft from his own; gathered her 
swan-cloak about her. 
22 



Legends of the New World 



Wavered she there in her flight, for another and 
greater was nearing. 

Swiftly along the ridge they streamed they huddled 
in racing, 

Goodly figures and fierce yet stung by a hurrying 
terror : 

Rallying in fitful halt, with rearward javelin volley, 

Flourish of challenging arms and shower of sling- 
thrown missiles, 

War-clubs wild upflung and champions , rush for 
spearwork : — 

Again the shattering jar, the streaming along the 
sky-line ! 



Blithely behind them toiled the eager and shouting 

seamen, 
Clambered the soldiery gay in semblance of orderly 

speeding ; 
Manifold, menacing, wild, hurried the tumult of 

Tayehs, 
Under their tossing plumes, and among them a 

brazen outglinting 
Showed to the eye, then was lost, then shone 

through the huddle of bronzes: 
Keener than diamond rays cutlass and bayonet 

sparkled ; 
Flame-like before them all sped the scarlet cloak of 

Mouina. 



23 



Legends of the New World 



Porter, with laughing eye, turned, but her eyes were 
imploring. 

Tears hung doubtfully there and wounded pride lay 
in ambush. 

Over the thwart she leaned, loveliest arms out- 
reaching. 



High beat the pulse of his heart, his brow was tan- 
gled and rueful. 

Softly he spoke: "If I would, full surely I could 
not, Taleeyah. 

See, how far they have sped for a voice merely mor- 
tal to carry ! 

But you, sweet witch of the wave and fairy of 
woodlands enchanted, 

Try them with murmurous spells of clear ineffable 
music 

Such as the sea-nymphs use when loneliest halls of 
the ocean 

Echo and thrill" 

But Taleeyah, heedful and anxious-hearted, 

Reading his face and tone though the words were 
vacant and foreign, 

Felt the bitterness deep of their loving-playful 
denial ; 

Whirled and flew from him angered, tossing black 
scorn behind her, 

Parted the drooping boughs, and was lost in the 
shade of the forest. 

Open-eyed he gazed, then laughed in dismay o'er- 
lightly; 

24 



Legends of the New World 



Called and called again, "Taleeyah!" then loudly 
"Taleeyah!" 

Pressed through the leafy veil wary of tokens of 
ambush ; 

Found the delicate shell that had swayed with her 
over the coral, 

Also her footprints found by the dint of the prow 
on the sand-beach, 

But gone was the soul of his dream Taleeyah the 
lovely enchantress, 

Gone as the voice that he sent idly through wood- 
lands unheeding. 



Slowly back to the ships, watchful and doubtful and 

musing, 
He wended, her visible presence clinging in fancy 

about him, 
For still in the core of his spirit he glowed with her 

beauty surpassing. 
Blithe lay the harbor resplendent; the voices of 

men in their labor, 
Merry with light exaltation, woke in expectance and 

triumph. 
Rarely from over the ridges came echoes of strife; 

the soft breezes 
Tilted the fronds of the palm-trees, toying with 

banner and pennon. 
Peace was abroad in their Eden, peace the all gra- 
cious and lovely. 
Far as old years and dim pictures the passion and 

pageant had vanished. 

25 



Legends of the New World 



Soon, from their mountain home, trooped the laugh- 
ing beauties of Appah, 

Lighter than nature in tint and marvels of child- 
like adorning. 

Some new race they seemed, airy and sprightly and 
gracious, 

With never a wrong to forgive and delighted in all 
delighting. 

Also Taleeyah came, but with smiles no more for 
Opotee ; 

Rather for strong Onow, the stormer of forts and 
of spearmen. 

Marvelled Porter thereat, as at some strange power 
of controlment, 

For he knew not the island heart, nor its ebb and 
flow like the billows, 

That abide not at all, but follow ever the moon in 
its courses, 

Ever the bright new moon with no token of any 
before it. 



Quaintly wrinkled his brow; his face was baffled 
and smiling: 

"Simple these islanders seem — more naked-simple 
than infants! 

Yet I discern they are far beyond me, O men of the 
Essex. 

We have made them ours with our flag," quoth he, 
"shall we ever make them 

Human as we are human, souls to be compre- 
hended ? 

26 



Legends of the New World 



Speed then our needful toils, let us leave this realm 
of enchantment, 

Where fancies cloying and sweet and visions en- 
thralling enfold us, 

Far from the living world, the world of honor and 
duty." 

But fondly enticement clung. The groaning an- 
chor, upheaving, 

Brought with it sighs and tears and plentiful dark- 
ness of spirit; 

Sorrow of men who must tear the clinging fibres 
that held them; 

Sorrow of women who loved, though in lightness 
that went with their loving 

— Eyes to be seen no more, voices and forms of 
that dreamland! 

Swift came the Essex again alert to the Chilian 
border 

Haunt of trafficking ships, gay home of the south- 
land dancers, 

Querying early and late, with all behoof to be wary. 

World-round the trailers had borne the long-armed 
vengeance of Britain, 

Wroth with their vanishing foe, the baneful, the 
daring, the splendid ! 

Dogged and near were they now, with life and 
death in the balance. 

Fierce and still lay the Essex in the harbor of Val- 
paraiso, 

Gun-shotted, clear o' the deck, at bay from maintop 
to keelson. 

27 



Legends of the New World 



In drove the frigate of Britain, veered and swept 

up beside her, 
Strained for assault, but a kindlier change came 

over her spirit. 
Smiling, her captain saluted, with friendly-cheerful : 

"Good morrow." 

Porter gave meet response, but his smile was set 

and sardonic. 
"Good day," quoth he. "Have a care; it were not 

well you should foul us. 
You have no right where you are: we judge by act 

and by token 
Touch but a rope of this ship and without a word I 

shall board you." 

Then was a compact made to meet on the open 
water, 

Ship unto ship, full stored, and with formal sum- 
moning challenge. 

Porter sallied thereon, but the Briton drew off to 
his consort, 

Mindful that double strength has the better war- 
rant of fortune. 

Lingered the Essex aw r hile, at ease in the neutral 

roadstead, 
Eyeing the leash of them daily, sea-wolves in wait 

to assail her; 
Seized then a prosperous hour, and flew with the 

wind to her speeding, 

28 



Legends of the New World 



All of the bright sea-world opening frankly before 

her, 
The world-wide realm of renown and achievement, 

the home of the hero. 

Rose the heartening cheer, then broke and died in a 
moment : 

For out of the south the gale, wheeling, sprang sav- 
agely on them, 

Snapped the mainmast off and whirled it abroad o'er 
the water. 

Helpless on the lee shore of a land half hostile, un- 
hopeful, 

Wistfully eyeing the sea, Porter cast anchor and 
waited. 

Slowly up to their prey flaunted the war-ships of 
Britain, 

Rainbow-motley in pennants and streamers of 
gaudy devising: — 

Forty long reach guns to six and the carronadoes, 

That could bear but a little way and were harm- 
less as blowpipes beyond it! 

Five hundred fighting men to a bare two hundred 
and sixty. 

Choosing their ground at will where never a broad- 
side could reach them, 

One lying dead astern, the other on her low-quarter, 

Swinging full front at their ease, they poured in 
their raking volleys. 

Yet so fierce the fire of her bow that the Cherub 
gave way and sailed round her, 
29 



Legends of the New World 



Joining the Phebe aft, off stern thundering alter- 
nate. 

Grim against awful odds, with never a thought of 
surrender, 

Chained to a stake and broken fought our glorious 
Essex; 

Grape-shot streaming along her deck from capstan 
to bowsprit, 

Roundshot tearing her vitals, woodwork and man- 
flesh together. 

Once and again she strove to work round, but the 
cables were severed. 

Dead to all use lay her bow, her batteries idle and 
silent ; 

Only a patch of space aft to bear all the brunt of 
the battle. 

Rearward they trailed the long guns through flail- 
like smiting and splintering, 

Thrust their grim lips over bulwarks, crashed them 
through window and planking — 

All there was room for — and served them, drove 
their hard message so surely, 

That both her assailants, outfoughten, weighed an- 
chor, turned helm and went seaward; 

While all the dark cloud of the hillside, where a 
nation was watching, gave echo, 

In a murmur deep-voiced of great wonder to the 
cheers that went up from the Essex. 

But battle anew was before her, where plume-torn 
she lay and wing-broken. 

30 



Legends of the New World 



Craftily, strong from their healing, secure in their 

range and the distance, 
Hovered the broad sails of Britain, with long stroke 

of missile down plunging. 
Porter writhed inly and muttered: "They shun 

us; 'tis time that we seek them. ,, 
So cutting her cable and spreading such sail as she 

might the brave Essex 
Reeled to a deadlier grapple and poured all her 

anger before her. 

One by one now the light pieces woke and joined 
cry and sped answer 

From port and from deck and from maintop, with 
shot and with shell and keen shrapnel. 

Eighty guns centering on forty and cross-drive of 
musketry fearful! 

On through that focus terrific, momently bitterer, 
intenser, 

Like a grim soul the torn Essex went with all tor- 
ment unswerving. 

Swathed in the dusk robe of war, deeds as of old 

time were doing. 
Shrank but one man from his gun and he heard his 

death doom on the instant. 
Nobler, when Wilmer was slain, bolt-torn afar and 

forever, 
Sped to the side his young lad, follower loving and 

faithful — 
Follower now unto death — leaned and peered down 

and swayed over, 

31 



Legends of the New World 



White-faced, with eye of despair and outpour of 
agony shrilling; 

The tumult around him forgotten the tempest of 
iron and the terror. 

Gone the vistas of youth the glories of life out- 
reaching, 

Gone, gone with the dead ! — and he leaped and died 
with his master. 

Ah! 'twas an hour of stress when the hero-heart of 
our people 

Stood out naked and strong, burgeoned out sav- 
agely, proudly, 

A birthright vehement force, elemental needing no 
cerements, 

While through the ruin and wreck, bleeding, be- 
strewn and outnumbered, 

Crawled with set teeth and strong heart the shat- 
tered, the riven Essex. 

Onset unfruitful, they fled her, the islanders pru- 
dent and chary 

(Two to one had they stood, till the breath of 
Tophet was on them) ; 

Whirling away beyond reach, they drove in their 
fire as they listed. 

Groaned in wrath and despair the fate-environed 

commander ; 
Yelled their savager scorn his tortured sons of the 

ocean, 

32 



Legends of the New World 



Smitten and torn from afar by those who abode not 

the closing. 
"This is but death for us all," quoth Porter, heavy 

of spirit, 
"Death with no power to repay, death man by man 

and by inches! 
Fair is the wind for the shore; let us land and put 

fire to the Essex. 
Many a sea has she sailed, but now is an end of 

her sailing." 



Therefore she turned her prow landward before 

light breezes, 
While over her double foe hurrying, harrying fol- 
lowed, 
Greedy of spoil that the sea or the w r aste of the 

air should deny them. 
Till they felt sharp play on their hulls though her 

stroke was the stroke of the dying. 
Again as by hostile hand was the scale o'erweighted 

against her. 
Off shore veered the wind, thrusting her groaning 

toward them. 
There in the drive of the iron, the shower of blood 

and of splinters, 
Aching at heart, she heaved her last anchor and 

doggedly waited. 



Sturdily then from the shore, heeding no outcry 
of missiles, 

33 



Legends of the New World 



Came through the fountaining spray Dowries the 

Lieutenant undaunted, 
Scaled her ruinous side and mournfully greeted her 

captain. 
"Glorious days have we known, but now they are 

ended and over. 
It is but right I should share her fate who have 

shared in her glory. 
Yonder I leave in safe hands the prize that you gave 

me to care for. 
Let me then fire the last gun and let me go down 

with the Essex/' 



Porter held forth his hand; stanchly and kindly 

made answer. 
"Woful return w T ould that be for service supreme 

and unfailing, 
Service not ended as yet, more helpful than death 

and as worthy. 
Had there indeed been hands that were safe as your 

own for that treasure — 
Neat little craft that she is, made but to carry our 

pennon ! — 
They should have had her, be sure, and I should 

have had you to aid me. 
Warily go to her now; trust not in scruple or 

promise ; 
Learn by my fate; and most lightly slip by them 

while yoked in the battle. 
So shall you waken new havoc, swift-winging the 

face of the ocean.' ' 

34 



Legends of the New World 



Bravely smiling he ceased and Downes with like 
visage made answer: 

"I will obey, as indeed alway has been my endeavor. 

Yet here is the one whom I love and this is the 
hour of her dying: 

Here my commander and friend, and now he has 
bidden me leave him. ,, 

So they wrung hands in the storm and he clam- 
bered down and departed. 

Porter gazed after him fondly; roused then and 
spoke to his people. 

"Gone are the boats where the ship, I doubt not, 
will speedily follow, 

Staved and sown all abroad, the sport of the wind 
and the waters, 

Or sunk to unsearchable depths ; but those who can 
swim may win safety. 

Overboard all who will ! You have done to the ut- 
most your duty." 

Then some took the plunge for the shore, and 

gained it with jubilant welcome, 
Or midway flung wide arms, by sea-monster torn or 

bolt-smitten. 
But most, with desperate heart abode by their flag 

and commander. 

Again was her cable cut and the wind in Tantalus- 
kindness 

Took her one sail aloft, straining the one rope un- 
severed, 

35 



Legends of the New World 



Urging her forth to her foes, lubberly, slantingly, 
wallowing, 

Horribly raked their fire beyond all power of re- 
sistance. 

Flamed her deck at the stern; flamed it amidship 
and forward. 

Flew her bow into fragments; the ocean lapped 
through it foredooming. 



Still from the slaughter and death-heaps faces 

looked hungrily onward, 
Gaunt and death-grim faces, frantic to come at 

their foemen, 
Still with a hoarse glad cry answered the summons 

for boarders. 
On in the teeth of the hell-blast freighted with dead 

and with dying, 
Driving the war-sloop afar, heading her full for 

the frigate, 
Drifted rather than drove the vengeful wreck of 

the Essex. 



Hillyer, the warily minded, took counsel again and 

abode not, 
Shrank from the fiend he had raised, the spectre 

bleeding and flaming, 
Paused but a moment to roar, then fled from a 

passion of curses; 
Turning afar as of old, while the wreck swung 

round and made answer. 

36 



Legends of the New World 



Hideous the carnage still, the air all howling with 
ruin. 

Fifteen men at a gun and every man of them smit- 
ten! 

Fifteen more in their stead! — and again the besom 
swept them 

And yet again was it manned and faithfully served 
without flinching. 

Full half the side beaten through and clinging in 
tatters together, 

Braced and battened by hands which were stricken 
to death in that healing. 

Angry the rush of the sea brief-thwarted at rag- 
gedest portals, 

Bitter the drive of the stormbolts, incessant the 
crashing and splashing. 

Each time a life for the lives of their comrades be- 
loved and their leader. 

Each time a life for the lives, till one only was left 
on the altar. 

Over the storm-racked wall he slung his spidery 

web-work, 
Striving with weary zeal to stanch what was past 

all stanching; 
Salient to hostile sight, dark-limned on the hull and 

unshielded : 
Till out of the fury a stroke severed the line that 

upbore him, 
And headlong with sudden cry he plunged, he sank 

in the ocean: 

37 



Legends of the New World 



Rose and struck out and was saved, then, stagger- 
ing, went to his duty. 

More fiercely rose the flames, wild and more wild 
the outcrying. 

Wardroom and berth deck and cockpit crammed 
with the wounded in peril. 

Menace of shattering steel that slew in the hand of 
the surgeon! 

Menace of rushing seas, with never a man to op- 
pose them. 

Menace of billowy smoke of lambent flame — and 
the powder. 

Suddenly through the deck uptore a bursting vol- 
cano, 

Hurling men at full length, sowing the firebrands 
widely ; 

Sowing horror as well of a grander and deadlier 
upspringing. 

"Every man to the fire or we all go heavenward 
together!" 

Down to that inner hell, Captain and seaman, they 
hurried. 

Swarming, stifling and struggling, thrilled with their 
horrible peril, 

They fought for the thin light shell casing the 
powers of destruction; 

Beat down the rush of the fire while the balls tore 
momently through them; 

Each a herald of death, flame-ally of wildest up- 
heaval. 

38 



Legends of the New World 



O never since dawning of time were men more 

grimly environed 
Nor fought a ghastlier fight than the cabined crew 

of the Essex. 

Doggedly fought they on till the terror gave way 

to their striving, 
Beaten out black and cold: and unstirred lay the 

mass of the powder. 
Then to the guns again, and they opened their 

futile firing. 

But now on every side arose the prayer for sur- 
render. 

Soon must they plumb the abyss and then what hope 
for the wounded? 

Cumbering all the ship they lay and their plight 
was appalling. 

Dolefully Porter called his captains of decks and of 
cannon. 

One responded alone, for all beside him had van- 
ished — 

Either dashed to the sea, or slain where they stood, 
or left lying 

Helpless in blood and in pain, while the riot mad- 
dened above them. 

Bitterly then he laughed: "There would seem 
scant room for my choosing, 

Boats gone, mast gone, sails gone, men gone, six 
guns against forty! 

39 



Legends of the New World 



Sinking at that and scarce saved from wild flight 

on the wings of the powder! 
Never, I think, was a hulk so riddled before and 

left floating. 
A hospital overbrimmed, a marvellous prize for 

Great Britain !" 
Slowly, with sorrowing heart, he bade the colors 

to flutter 
Down to the shades of defeat and the cruise of the 

Essex was ended. 

[Note] Mouina's portrait will be found opposite page 
32 of Vol. 2 of Porter's "J ourna l of a Cruise, etc., in 
the years 1812, 1813 and 1814," which work supplies many 
of the data of this poem. 



40 



Legends of the New World 



THE QUAKERESS 

Massachusetts A. D. 1660 

I, Eliakim, take up here against you 

Testimony of the Lord our God 
He who guided, guarded you and fenced you 

Comes to greet you with a fiery rod. 
As I break this bottle on the altar, 

Cruel rulers He will break your sway. 
Priests of evil, men of scourge and halter, 

Who shall shield you in His aw^ful day? 

In the name of Christ I charge you hear me, 

By the stripes He bore and I do bear! 
Lo these eyes have seen the glory near me; 

Seen and felt the terror and the glare! 
We did come to you in loving mildness : 

Ye have sown our blood like summer rain. 
Those are coming in a ghastly wildness 

Who shall reap and bind His bitter grain. 

For our solace in the day of scorning, 

There was one w T hom Satan might have spared, 
Comely as the mayflower child of morning; 

Meekly wise of brow and hazel haired: 
Soft of tint and smooth of voice and motion, 

Ever smiling with an inward glee: — 
Dreamful eyes afire with pure devotion! 

Modest maiden heart that would be free. 

41 



Legends of the New World 



She was mine, my daughter, and I love her 

As I loved her then ; but could not save. 
Evil eyes hung greedily above her; 

Fangs were reared more cruel than the grave. 
Tn my daily walk I met Oppression; 

In my home I felt the tightening toils. 
Dire the burden ! — and for no transgression ; 

While your priesthood fattened on my spoils. 

So at last she sought your Sodom-city, 

Saying: "Peradventure I shall find 
Hearts to aid for righteousness and pity, 

Blind not wholly trooping with the blind." 
For her tender heart ye gave her sorrow ; 

For her tender form a bed of stone ; 
Dungeon fare; the terror of to-morrow, 

With its whitening shame and piteous moan. 

O my Deborah! — from that place she brought me 

Not again her olden self and glee; 
But with still and awful face besought me 

From the coming wrath to haste and flee. 
Set her eyes were with an inward vision 

As of one who saw in all the same ; 
And her speech was seer-like in elision, 

With a power to stir like sudden flame. 

Oft she spake of her the saintly mother, 
Grimly sentenced by your man of blood, 

Meekly praying for that wandering brother, 
Though the soil was reddened where she stood: 

And of her whose shieldless bosom nestled 

42 



Legends of the New World 



On the knotty bark and splinters dire: 
And of all whose shame and torment wrestled 
As. the scourge cart trailed them through the 
mire. 

And of martyred men, whose voices faltered 

Soundless in the uproar of the drum; 
While a woman on the scaffold, haltered, 

Face to face with death and bound and dumb, 
Watched the awful manner of their dying, 

Girt with weapons and with priestly mirth, 
Saw in noisome pit their bodies lying 

Coffinless, unclad and flung to earth. 

Ah, New England, highest in profession, 

Lowest in the utter lapse of grace! 
What — thou miracle of all transgression — 

Hast thou done before thy Maker's face? 
Lo, thy worship is abomination; 

And thy praises are blaspheming pride ; 
Thou hast torn thy Saviour from His station; 

Thou hast pierced anew His bleeding side. 

Yet I lingered. On a lovely morning 

When the checkered mountains shone afar 
And the groves in all their rich adorning 

Made the summer land as Edens are, 
Came a threatful summons from the village, 

Blighting all the glory of the sun, 
And I left my home and happy tillage 

All I loved and all that must be done. 

43 



Legends of the New World 



Ah, a direr husbandry was waiting! 

God had need of me — and so had they. 
Yet I rendered them but love for hating 

Till the fearful dealing of that day. 
In their tavern court, as wont, I found them, 

Den of riot, mockery and woe. 
"Friend, art Quaker ?" queried all around them; 

And I answered gravely: "Even so." 

More I said not; for my lips were sealed, 

And no warrant for their opening came. 
Patient, motionless, I heard revealed 

Doom of hissing scourge and branding flame. 
Then there fell a hush, and through the curtain 

That had settled on my soul and sight, 
Loomed a solemn presence and uncertain, 

Like a regnant mystery of night. 

It was Deborah's voice: "He sends me shrouded 

In this outer blackness for a sign: — 
Hearts perverse and evil-wrapped and clouded, 

Souls at enmity with things divine! 
Lo I warn you to forsake your error, 

Turn your hearts to righteousness and ruth, 
Ere I come to you in all the terror 

Of the merciless and naked truth." 

Thus she spake: and stood there tall and stately 
In her solemn robe without a word. 

And I heard them murmur: "How sedately 
Came the message from the comely bird! 

It were wise to put her to the showing." 

44 



Legends of the New World 



And the judges said: "We deem it well — 
'Merciless and naked'; and foreknowing! — 
Search for devil-marks the child of Hell." 



Then they led her forth; and left me standing 

With a heart that broke in words of fire. 
But they mocked and sent me to the branding 

And the hideous lash that tortures dire. 
Step by step their minion took his measure, 

Throwing weight and zeal in every blow; 
But through all I seemed to see my treasure 

In her whitening shame of direr woe. 

For I knew too well their wicked meaning. 

On the morrow she would know and feel. 
And my soul was like a ship careening 

When the heavens are one vast thunder peal. 
All the night I walked the awful forest; 

All the day I trod the vacant lands; 
Crying without ceasing: "Thou abhorrest: 

Take my vengeance in Thy fearful hands." 

And the Lord of Light and King of Glory 

Verily He heard; for when the spire 
Burned aloft, and story after story 

All the western windows took on fire 
Came a voice: "Return and see!" — and grimly 

Went I backward through the gathering gloom 
And I felt the shadows trooping dimly 

And the marshalled legions of the tomb. 

45 



Legends of the New World 



In their meeting all was light for seeing, 

All was darkness for the inner soul. 
And there came a sound of wings afleeing 

And a roar like waters as they roll. 
Then the wall was seized with sudden shaking, 

And the door drave inward with the blast, 
And amid the flaring and the quaking 

I beheld my Deborah at last. 

Deborah my darling! — mine no longer 

But a missioned angel of the Lord! 
For her arm rose wildlier and stronger 

Than the wielder of the fiery sword. 
For His power upreared her form and filled it 

To her streaming aureole of hair; 
And the terror of His beauty thrilled it 

Breaking from her eyes in lightning glare. 

And the very lightning darted by her 

With the blinding drapery of the storm, 
And the lambent dance of shadows nigh her 

Robed in mystery her lovely form. 
But through all the darting and the flashing 

Limb and bosom glimmered like a dream; 
And amid the pauses of the crashing 

Rose the grandeur of her voice supreme. 

"Once I came to you in robes of warning: 
Now I come to you in burning fire. 

Ye have stripped me for your sin and scorning ; 
God hath granted me His own attire. 

Lo, His terror hath He sent before me; 

4 6 



Legends of the New World 



And His vengeance is about me now! 
Wail: — He heeds not, for His hand is o'er me, 
And His wrath is written on my brow." 

Then at once there rose a mighty crying: — 

"Lo the Truth, the Truth of God is here!" 
From without there came in swift replying 

All unearthly tones of hate and fear. 
Broke the storm ; and with a ghastlier breaking 

Broke the surges of a hideous foe; 
All the revelry of malice waking! 

All the hell-fire bursting from below! 

Deborah vanished; but indeed I know not 

Whether slain or borne by God afar: 
For the morrow's sun looked in to show not 

Aught but wrecks and ravages of war. 
By the smoking housewalls of the village 

Scalpless forms and mutilate were strewn ; 
In the chaos of the pulpit-pillage 

Lay the lying priest asunder hewn. 

I alone am spared, as a forerunning 

Shadow of the fury of the sky. 
It shall smite you with a sudden stunning; 

It shall whirl you as the dead leaves fly. 
Cruel hearts like bitter waters "frozen 

Ye shall be as soft as miry clay. 
Ye shall be a curse unto my chosen 

Souls that mocked and made of them a prey. 

47 



Legends of the New World 



Under you the worm shall be and o'er you; 

Through your hollow eyes the viper stare ; 
And the loathliest thing that crawls before you 

Weave foul meshes in your tangled hair. 
From the Book of Life your names are missing. 

Howling on the wind your spirits flee ; 
Evermore a scoffing and a hissing: 

For the Lord hath spoken — it shall be. 

[Note] Many of the denunciations and specific changes 
of Eliakim in this poem repeat or approximate those of 
Bishop's old work "New England Judged." 



48 



Legends of the New World 



THE BOOK OF DEATH 

A NIGHTMARE OF WITCHCRAFT DAYS 

In the days when Salem went wild with terror, 

With the eyes of Balaam in every face 
Which felt, but saw not, the Sons of Error, 

The forms that awe not, but blast, our race: 
When wizard fingers by night were clinging, 

And pain that lingers was dealt by day, 
And with mock and mowing they came, wild wing- 
ing, 

The soul o'erthrowing that strove to pray: 
When sin unbidden loomed up before me, 

And shame, long hidden, had felt their breath, 
And the curse of ages seemed hovering o'er me — 

I tore the pages from the Book of Death. 

The day was ending, the night was falling 

With faint lights blending along the west, 
When from their embers a flight appalling, 

My soul remembers, assailed my rest. 
With pain and tossing my frame was weary, 

My heart with crossing and hope deferred. 
I drank the glimmer of twilight dreary; 

My soul grew dimmer; I spoke the word. — 
The word they taught me in evil dreaming, 

That well nigh brought me to be their prize ; 
And straightway round me I felt them streaming 

To hunt and hound me with glinting eyes. 

The evil creatures I saw half seeing — 
The greedy features, the reaching hands ! 

49 



Legends of the New World 



A rout of darkness through darkness fleeing, 

A braided starkness of living strands! 
And while their spinning grew fast and faster 

And jeers were dinning within my brain, 
Slowly behind them their shadowy master 

Loomed up to wind them through soul and vein. 
A crowned towering of formless terror, 

A dim outflowing of all that's ill ! 
In wild careening — the prince of Error! — 

I felt the leaning of his mighty will. 

Like woven lightning the circling glances 

With lariat-tightening about me drew, 
With feigned retirals and slant advances 

The lessening spirals upon me flew. 
Now swooping, shunning, each gibing masquer 

My life was stunning through eye and ear 
With horrid longing and thoughts grotesquer 

Than aught that's thronging the courts of Fear. 
And through the chaos that seemed to madden 

With forms of Laos to daunt my soul, 
Towering o'er me, the great Abaddon 

Held down before me his haunted scroll. 

Like mist the pages but linked and fettered 

By wrath of ages and spells malign; 
And all their dimness was livid-lettered; 

And through that grimness the mandate: "Sign." 
In dread recording I read uprisen 

For foul rewarding the evil past. 
Each shameful sorrow had burst its prison, 

On all to-morrow its spell to cast. 

50 



Legends of the New World 



Each midnight glamour of thought unholy! 

Each twilight tremor of demon birth! — 
And more I may not; but deepening slowly 

Were lines that slay not but blast on earth, 



My soul's abysses were wildly wreathing 

With forms and hisses that claimed me kin, 
And through and through me I felt the breathing 

Of him who knew me, the Lord of Sin. 
My hand uplifting, in will-less motion, 

Before the shifting of filmy leaves, 
Swerved to the signing, as o'er the ocean 

In wayward lining the wind-plume weaves. 
No hand from Heaven outreached to aid me ; 

No cloud was riven by angel breath ; 
But a sudden waking of terror swayed me; 

I tore, wild-shaking, the Leaves of Death. 



I seized and tore them with blind outreaching; 

While round and o'er them the chaos flew; 
Then vanished straightway with eerie screeching, 

The viewless gateway had closed anew. 
Yet lingered threatful in princely looming 

The shade regretful and vast and dim. 
The voice came faintly, and mocked, foredooming, 

Which once led saintly the seraphim. 
"My curse I leave you, the gift of knowing: 

None shall deceive you while power is mine. 
Seek thou the hidden the blackness flowing, 

Unblest, unbidden, from light divine." 

51 



Legends of the New World 



Wakeful it found me the shining morrow. 

All around me was sweet with balm. 
The sunbeam-slanting had nought of sorrow; 

Nor the wildbird chanting on field and lawn. 
Then one drew near me reverend, peaceful, 

A light to cheer me within his eyes 
A soul uplifted, serene and easeful, 

Through cloud-veils drifted of Paradise. 
Oft had I hearkened his ministration 

To spirits darkened beneath the rod. 
With surge of soul to the near salvation, 

I held the scroll to the man of God. 

O woful error! — I felt the blasting 

Of shame and terror before he read, 
In strange wild traces of wan o'er-casting 

Like the panic faces of the stricken dead. 
Haggard and moaning he turned upon me 

A soul-dethroning abhorring eye: 
"Thine be the glory, the Fiend has won me. 

O wretched story! O God to die!" 

Sullen and sunken he left me, creeping, 

A figure shrunken that blurred the day, 
Despair's dumb token, too numb for weeping, 

A spirit broken that dared not pray. 
To hateful laughter I followed grimly 

By homestead rafter, by field and lawn, 
Beyond all blinding of heaven-veils, dimly 

Softly enwinding the things withdrawn. 
With grippen bosom forever clasping 

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Legends of the New World 



The record grewsome the Leaves of Death ; 
Dismayed, foreknowing, all secrets grasping, 
I walked, all showing, a scorching breath. 



I met the just man, whose thought was spurning 

All things that thrust man to lower place : 
And straightway paling in self discerning 

With low bewailing, he bowed his face. 
The mother heedful in matron smiling, 

Who wrought the needful in ways that shone, 
In mute appealing from all reviling 

Went blindly reeling and overthrown. 
The martyr saintly his doom awaiting 

Answered me faintly before the host: 
"My godly seeming hid prideful hating 

Foully blaspheming the Holy Ghost." 



The eyes of all men were set abhorrent. 

I dared not call men my living kin. 
Mine was the blasting of the fiery torrent, 

For everlasting the sight of Sin. 
One and one only held heart to love me 

Moaning lonely along the waste; 
That heart the purest and high above me, 

Her vision surest, divinely graced. 
Yet still I doubted where all had failed me 

And shadows flouted and tempters dared. 
"Essay the testing," they still assailed me, 

"The sure outwresting of sin ensnared." 

53 



Legends of the New World 



Shrinking yet spurning, 'twixt faith and fearing, 

I felt the yearning of the livid book: — 
Its eager thrilling the quarry nearing, 

Its wizard willing that bade me: "Look." 
When down of May-time, through soft air sowing, 

Brightened the day-time with fairy snow, 
I found her under the leaflets' blowing, 

In loving wonder at all below. 
A stream went by her with silver tinkling; 

On flowerets nigh her she would not tread 
Aloft, green-golden, were wild-birds twinkling. 

There, grimly holden, I brought my dread. 

She met my clouding with trustful glances, 

My doubt enshrouding with words of cheer; 
Her smile of sunlight that all enhances 

Proffered the one light that baffles fear. 
But through its rareness in fore-revealing, 

I felt the bareness of blanching fright, 
The gleam elysian the fond appealing 

Became a vision of foulest night. 
I fled the probing of soul-depths chasmal, 

My heart grim-robing the fancied ill, 
Yet, unbeguiling, through forms phantasmal, 

Pitying, smiling, I saw her still. 

I bade the desert, the mountains, hide me; 

I sought the floodland the thicket lone. 
The grey wolf, lurking, has crouched beside me, 

The storm, wild-working, has found me prone. 
I may not, dare not — in covert biding — 

54 



Legends of the New World 



Seek those who share not my dismal lore; 
Nor wreak the trial on her, confiding, 

Of wraths dread vial forevermore. 
My eyes are feeding on scorching pages; 

My heart is bleeding, I long to flee : — 
O in the flowing of countless ages 

To cease from knowing or cease to be! 



55 



Legends of the New World 



THE STORY OF ALVAR 

He came in the light of golden hours 

From a world of crime to the land of flowers! 

Worn and weary with strife and greed, 

Sick at heart with their hollow meed, 

Battered in limb and seared in soul, 

Bowed, yet far from the midlife goal, 

Feeling ever the red blood spilt, 

Bayed and haunted by hounds of guilt, 

Bayed and harried by spectral fears 

Of a shadow speeding with speeding years, 

Of a terror streaming with streaming hours, 

He came in his need to the land of flowers. 

Earth saw never a stranger crew 
Than grey de Leon about him drew. 
Awful figures of human wreck 
Peered and strained from his rushing deck, 
With eyes that boded no good to man 
In the life that yearned for a longer spam- 
Fearful life which they knew right well 
Had less of earth than the nether Hell! — 
Fleeting life that was yet agleam 
With the tempting hues of a magic dream : — 
A dream too lovely for human birth, 
The rarest fancy of royal earth. 

But it was not given the Lion of Spain 
To win the guerdon of youth again, 
With all the glories that still abide, 
To the eyes of Age in a life's springtide: 
For the foe stood firm on the flowery shore; 

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Legends of the New World 



And the shafts flew thick and the spear drove sore; 

Till he sank in blood on his riven glaive; 

And they turned the prow to the open wave, 

Leaving only a curse behind 

That shrilled afar on the western wind ; — 

A curse — and a comrade loth to flee 

From his only hope in the years to be. 

First to leap on the shining sand 
Alvar had pierced the bronzed band, 
For the olden power was in his blow 
The beckoning hope and the driving woe: 
They shrank aghast from his frenzied face 
And never a limb was stirred in chase. 

But the woods were wide as the prairies are 
And the island-hummocks were few and far; 
And the deadly beauty of poison-foes 
Coiled in the swamp that the cypress knows; 
And the lake's fair garden of painted leaves 
Blended with mazes the marish weaves ; 
And the river the rare magnolia shades 
Was lost to life in the everglades. 
A world of splendor on turf and strand 
On mingling water and melting land! 
A splendor armed with a taunting sting, 
For he sought in vain for the magic spring ! 

Gasping and gaunt in the noon he lay 
Where vines like banners were all asway, 
And under the live-oak's leafy cloud 
The long moss hung in a filmy shroud. 
He looked on the mounds of regal hue 
And the turf aspangle with gold and blue, 

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Legends of the New World 



And his heart within gave a yearning cry — 
"With so much beauty, can man but die?" 
And he closed his eyes on the bitter pain 
Of a life he never might live again. 

He woke in the lap of a light canoe, 
That sped like wind o'er the water blue, 
With a living freight that he well might deem 
The flitting forms of a sunny dream: — 
Rare of beauty, in garb as rare, 
Fair as the eastland maids are fair, 
But with something wildly and sweetly strange 
In the clear fine skin and the eye's free range; 
With something sweetly and strangely wild 
In the arch kind gaze, like a loving child. 
And he looked abroad on the mighty lake 2 

1 "The river St. Mary has its source from a vast lake 
which occupies a space of near three hundred miles in 
circuit and contains some large islands, one of which 
the present generation of Creeks represent to be a most 
blissful spot of the earth. They say it is inhabited by 
a peculiar race of Indians whose women are incompar- 
ably beautiful. They also say it has been seen by some 
of their enterprising hunters who being lost in inex- 
tricable swamps and bogs and on the point of perishing 
were unexpectedly relieved by a company of beautiful 
women, whom they call daughters of the sun. These 
hunters had a view of their settlements on an elevated 
island or promontory, in a beautiful lake, but in their 
endeavors to approach it they were involved in per- 
petual labyrinths and like enchanted land, still as they 
imagined they had just gained it, it seemed to fly before 
them, alternately appearing and disappearing. They 
never have been able to find that enchanting spot nor 
even any road to it." "Bartram's Travels," 1793. 

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Legends of the New World 



Whence four great rivers their courses take; 

And o'er the nymphea's golden fields 

Of the nodding bells and the swaying shields 

He saw afar the plumed heads 

Of the seven dim isles that the Indian dreads. 



Slowly he watched the wizard town 

Lift from the wave its clusters brown, 

Bristling o'er like a flight of spears 

With the quaint devices of vanished years, 

Heaped like the cells of the wild bees' hive — 

A thing of the old world left alive! 

Court and portal, and limb and face, 

Had the wondrous youth of a changeless race. 



Weird as death was the sacred hill 
Reared by arms that were living still, 
Though the mystic symbols that girt its span 
Have long been lost to the mind of man — 
Graven in cross and curve and bar, 
Rayed like the rays of a flashing star. 
Terrace on terrace slanting high, 
Keenly lined on the sunny sky, 
It rose foursquare to a tablet small 
That left but room for the temple wall, — 
A pillared cavern of cool grey stone, 
Where the vivid water throbbed and shone, 
Sparkling and springing from nether night, 
Filled with the jewels of broken light. 

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Legends of the New World 



Down from temple and fount and hill 

Choral figures were winding still, 

Hymning the life of a subtler world, 

The myth and marvel in nature furled, 

Chanting afar with a solemn swell 

The sacred power of their holy well: 

And he seemed to find in every tone 

Something an earlier life had known. 

Clad like the clouds of noon they came — 

Or the ruddy snow by a leaping flame — 

Or the passive depth of the open sea — 

Or the woodland's wilding witchery; 

Never a tint was lacking there 

That gleams in water or earth or air: 

They moved with the motion of boughs that sway 

In the loving breath of a summer day. 

But never a tint of earthly sheen 
Rivals the robe of the island queen, 
Throbbing and thrilled like the noonday sky 
With threaded lustres that shun the eye, 
Clear as the finest rose of pearl, 
That floats and dips in the ocean whirl, 
With the light of morn on its filmy shell— 
And it flowed with her like a flowing spell: 
Welcome as coming of rare delight! 
Grand as the march of the royal night ! 

The wealth of ages gone and dead 
Crowned her soul with a crown of dread ; 
But the godlike pity that filled her eyes 
Was soft as kindly and kind as wise. 

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Legends of the New World 



A single glance in those subtle springs 
Was a world of weird and timeless things, 
But the early freshness of maiden grace 
Lay like the dawn on her lovely face: 
She shone with the beauty of fadeless flowers 
To touch and brighten this world of ours. 

Under the light of her sunny glance, 
His soul was hushed in a happy trance, 
A breathless rapture of rest and ease, 
Like the murmured music of forest trees. 
She raised her hand, and the choral strain 
Ceased like the ceasing of summer rain; 
She waved him on to the charmed shore: 
Lightly they clasped him and lifted o'er. 

Long he lay in a curtained cell, 
Drowsing softly and tended well. 
Dreamy figures around him glide, . 
Dreamy music is at his side ; 
And still in the utter lapse of thought 
A gracious presence before him wrought; 
A gentle presence with wistful gaze 
That burned within like a searching blaze : 
Till he rose at last in the morning still 
Blithe of spirit and free from ill; 
He rose, and followed the stately mien 
And the gliding step of the island queen. 

The sunlight broke like a burst of fire, 
And with it the voice of a mighty choir, 
And in the power of that mystic song 
He seemed to be lifted and borne along; 

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Legends of the New World 



Till his eyes were cleared from the dazzling spell, 
And he stood with the queen by the holy well; 
And he saw her great eyes clear and fine 
Shine through the arch of the water's shine. 
He leaned his lips to the showering spray, 
And his spirit mounted like mounting day. 

But the seeds of poison were rife within 

And the new life throbbed with the birth of sin, 

As the keener vision of quickened eyes 

Heightened his greed for the wealth that dies. 

And visions floated and darkly rose 

Of the sack and slaughter of helpless foes — 

Visions the bloody cross of Spain 

Had sown in fire on the western main — 

Flooding the mount with the hues of Hell 

Tainting the flow of the sacred well. 

He bowed in glee for the mystic draught: 
"Life to the Lion!" he cried, and laughed; 
"Life to the Lion — who weakly fled — 
From me, most living, though deemed the dead! 
Life and treasure and lustrous charms 
When the lake is agleam with our dinted arms! 
Life to the Lion!" — but nought was there, 
For the spray-bloom shrank from the upper air, 
As a flower may shrink from the chill of night; 
It danced far down with a mocking light, 
Far adown in the jagged cleft! — 
And he rose aghast like a soul bereft. 
Then turned for aid to the kindlier sheen 
That had brightened the eyes of the island queen. 

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Legends of the New World 



But the wistful gaze was sterner now, 

And doom was written athwart her brow. 

His one light kiss of the living spray 

Made her words as clear as the clearest day. 

"Not for the water of life you came, 

But the bitter food of a deadly flame; 

Not with the heart that turns from ill, 

But the craving greed of a sordid will; 

Not to cancel the deeds accurst, 

But to crown them all with the last and worst. 

Who loves not nature nor man nor truth 

Quaffs not the fountain of endless youth. " 



Bowed in spirit and faint and sore, 

He wandered down to the waveless shore. 

He stepped in the lap of a light canoe, 

And turned, and the island was full in view. 

Fluttered and glimmered the fields of grain; 

The orange blossoms were shed like rain, 

The palm upreared its slender stem, 

The cactus burned with a purple gem, 

And all the splendor the sunlands know 

Was spread abroad in its rarest show. 

But over the cells of the wizard town 

And the graven hill with its temple-crown, 

His straining vision still would dwell 

On the dazzling arch of the taunting well: 

Sparkling and springing it rose to sight 

Filled with the jewels of broken light. 

Many a day had had its birth 

Since they laid the Lion low in earth, 

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Legends of the New World 



When a stranger swarthy and tall and still, 
With the settled calm of a baffled will, 
Hailed from the shore of the land of flowers 
The floating flag of the Spanish powers. 
"Alvar!" he said, and they knew him then 
For one long lost to the world of men. 



64 



Legends of the New World 



THE VALE OF AVOCA 

A LEGEND OF GEORGE WASHINGTON 

By the lovely vale of Avoca the patriot leader lay: 
From the lovely Vale of Avoca he rode at the death 

of day: 
And the shadows kept weaving before him like 

the snares that beset his way. 

He of the knightly soul and the empire-shaking arm, 
The will that could hold forever, the wrath like a 

midnight storm, 
The eyes that loved the sunshine, the heart that 

was kind and warm. 

At once in the arch of the woodland a figure seemed 
born of the air, 

Wayward and fitfully troubled, spirit-like, mar- 
vellous fair; 

And the wind and the sunset had given their life 
to the curls of her hair. 

"Go not again to Avoca," she warned with a tremor 

of pain. 
His calm grey eyes were on her, firm as the hand 

on the rein. 
"And why not, child?" he asked her, searching 

through eye and through brain. 

"Ah!" she cried, "was there ever such task for a 

motherless girl? 
What I should do I know not; for my brain is all 

in a whirl." 

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Legends of the New World 



His massive hand fell lightly, stroking each ten- 
drilled curl. 



Gently he spoke, down-gazing: "If there is truth 
to be had, 

It should be here, — Now tell me the whole truth, 
good or bad. 

Why should I shun Avoca and your father's wel- 
come glad?" 



"O," she moaned, "the torment under the rain 
and the roof! 

The terror of lurking evil at the sound of your com- 
ing hoof! 

If you but guessed, you could not urge me to fur- 
ther proof. 



"I warn you truly ; but wisdom will take no warn- 
ing from me. 

I cannot do more, I dare not." — She turned as in 
act to flee. 

"Farewell, dear girl!" he answered: "I thank you. 
So let it be." 

. • • • • 

There was life in the Vale of Avoca over the festal 

board, 
Glamour of gracious bearing, mirth of a mind well 

stored. 
Baits of the Judas Ettrick, nursing his evil hoard. 

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Legends of the New World 



At last by door and window, he saw the glimmer 

of red, 
And rose with a florid triumph masking an inner 

dread — 
For the calm grey eyes were on him. "My prisoner, 

sir!" he said. 

The stately guest, unshaken, made but a quiet sign ; 
And the troops filed inward, circling the twain in 

a bristling line. 
Calmly smiling, he answered: "It seems, sir, you 

are mine.' , 

Scorn in his great eyes deepening: — "Arnold at least 

was bold. 
There was something worthy of vengeance when a 

hero was bought and sold. 
And yet, poor worm, you have given your life for 

the British gold." 

• • • • • 

The sunshine was making gladness about the 

guarded room. 
With gold the lawns were studded, the apple-boughs 

all abloom. 
When one stole in to the chieftain, aghast at a 

father's doom. 

No woodland fairy now, but a winsome daylight 

maid, 
Driven by inner urgence, halting as half afraid, 
With eyes that were mirrors of horror and form 

that quivered and swayed. 

6 7 



Legends of the New World 



"Surely you will not do it!" with clasping hands she 

cried. 
"Did I not come to save you yonder at eventide? — 
You have not heard the voices calling: 'Thou par- 
ricide!'" 

"My child," he answered, shaken, "to God you 

should bend the knee. 
The treason to Freedom's cause was more than 

the wrong to me. 
All men will crave his doom, lest a worse thing 

came to be." 

"Worse than the worst is this!" she cried. "There 

is One who saith: 
'Fitter are mercy's tones for our feeble human breath 
Than the echoless trumpet-blast of the awful Angel 

of Death.' 



"O I am worn and broken — I who was once so glad ! 
Whichwaysoe'er I turn, my life is a vista sad. 
But make me to slay my father? — O God, it will 
drive me mad ! 



"Listen, I summon your honor, that never has coun- 
selled ill. 

How will you answer it, tell me, as the years come 
crowding still? — 

'She saved my life; and I gave her — her fathers 
blood to spill! " 

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Legends of the New World 



He smote his fist on the table that it leaped beside 

his knee. 
His face flashed out like lightning: — "By God, it 

shall not be!" 
He laughed: "Forgive me, lady; but your words 

have set him free." 

His smile had a bitter savour, though his eyes were 

in kindly play: 
"My whole life has been lived in the very eye of 

day. 
I think I have earned the right of hiding this sin 

away. 

"Silence shall cover the wreck of his life and his 
soul and his crime. 

Let a new life open before him unshamed in an- 
other clime. 

And only the name of Avoca shall pass to a later 
time." 

She cried: "Now the Lord be with you for the 

joy you have brought to me! 
May He aid you and guard you ever, strong arm of 

the hearts that are free! 
May He open your eyes on the promise of the 

glories that yet shall be!" 



6 9 



Legends of the New World 



ELKIN HAY 

Rainbows along the strand, 

And white caps out at sea! — 
And over the gleaming sand, 
Between the waves and the land, 
In the setting ^sun rode he. 

It had tangled its gold in his hair 

That the ocean breezes blew; 
Like the forms of a finer air 

The white-wings hovered and flew; 
And around him, unaware, 

The world into beauty grew. 
Wild was the life he led 

On that lonely strip of beach, 
Gleaning the spoils of the dead 

And the lore that the storm will teach; 
Till his inmost soul, they said, 

Was weird as the sea-fowl's screech. 

So, as he rode alone 

Scenting, it seemed, his prey 
(For the cloudy pillar had grown 

And the wind was driving the spray), 
His eyes were broad and bright 
With the thought of the coming night 

And its harvest for Elkin Hay. 

Lifted the light from the shore, 
Lifted the light from the sea ; 

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Legends of the New World 



And it freighted with golden ore 

The clouds that were floating free: 
And it touched with an angry tinge 
The long and ominous fringe 

That was steadily sweeping on, 
Like a host on a doomed town. 

Then they faded, one by one; 
And the shadows settled down: 
From the tower behind him far 
Outshone a new-born star; 
And an answering vivid gleam 
Broke in a branching stream 

From the great cloud's deepening frown; 
Then, in the crash and the roar, 
The wild wind swept the shore, 

And the night and the storm had begun. 

Silently, hour by hour, 

Through deepening chaos he rode, — 
Now fetlock-deep in the foam 

That wildly inland flowed, 
Now stung by the silted sand 
That was torn from its transient home 
And hurtled along the strand 
By the storm-wind's arm of power. 

Out of the darkness a light, 

And out of the light a cry! 
Framed in that door of the night 

A sailless bark plunged by. 
Then the darkness closed again, 
And the peering form in the rain 

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Legends of the New World 



Saw but the gloom of the sky. 
Yet he could not choose but hark 
To that wail from out of the dark, 

That lost abysmal cry. 

Morn on the gleaming beach, 

Morn on the basking sea, 
And the breakers tumbling in 
With schoolboy frolic and din, 

And the light surf racing free! 
Ah ! earth had a taunting speech ; 
Or what did her joyance teach, 

But the utter lack of care 
For the work of the vanished night, 
And the horrors hidden from sight, 

And the dead in the sea-foam there? 

The hardy steed had gone 

To browse by the landward bay; 
And there, by the corpse alone, 

Silent the wrecker lay, 
Searching a missive borne 
By the dead through the night to the morn 

And the living along the sands — 
Telling of deeds that were done 
In the blaze of a tropic sun, 

And the tumult of lawless lands: 



Of a coveted gleaming hoard 
In* a mountain fastness stored, 

And a dark-eyed comely dame; 
And a guilty longing, fanned 

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Legends of the New World 



By flutter of lip and hand, 

And the eyes responsive flame: 
Of a sudden warning at night, 
And a tremulous headlong flight 

Through the dusk savannahs alone: 
Of a vengeful return from afar, 
On the crest of a billow of war, 
A lava-burst of the South, 
That flooded the tower of stone: 
Of a midnight escalade, 
And the clashing of blade on blade 
O'er the battlemented walls, 
Through chambers and courts and halls, 
To the base of the chapel shrine, 
That was stained with the costly wine 
Which painted his dripping sword: 
And he knew he had won the hoard, 
And the dame of the ruby mouth. 

Ay more! — and a doom unspoken, 
Unhinted by symbol or token, 
Save the victim's boding frown 

And the curse in his dying eye, 
Where the soul-light flickered down 

To a horror that would not die; 
But borne by his spirit in 
To the heart of the man of sin 

With the force of a prophecy. 

Wild were his revels then 

With the dark-eyed queen of shame; 
Wilder the evil men 

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Legends of the New World 



Who about their threshold came: 
And the heart that had broken troth 
Wearied, and then grew wroth, 

And planned that his own should feel 
The thrust of a rival's steel: 
Hidden, he heard them both. 
So he struck the foremost blow; 
Then gathered his spoils and fled 
From that land of memories red, 
On the bark The Driven Snow. 



But still, as they drove along, 

When all around was hushed, 
Like the burden of a song 
He could hear the notes of woe: 

And the clouds of evening flushed 
With the blood of his murdered foe: 
And he knew that the south-wind's breath 
Was bearing him on to his death. 



His words stood out like a cry: 
'May the treasure that tempted me 
Lie hid in the depths of the sea, 

Till the rending of earth and sky. 
Its gleam has a mighty spell; 
But its weight drags down to Hell: 
It is cursed with a curse unspoken, 
And this is its lasting token — 

Who wins it shall swiftly die.' 

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Legends of the New World 



Peace in the ancient village 

Of many-bowered Berlin, 

From the sound of the surf shut in 
By miles of woodland and tillage; 
Reaching its winding arms, 

Whose leafy canopies 

Flutter with every breeze, 
To the heart of the circling farms: 
A fragrance in all the air 

From a hundred gardens blown, 
And sunflecks everywhere 

In wavering kisses thrown! 
There in the lovely weather 
The twain were again together; 
The corpse, to be laid away, 
And storm-worn Elkin Hay. 

Those who gathered near 
Saw something strange and drear 
In his haggard cheek, and his brow 
And the watchful eyes below, 

With their more than earthly gleaming 
Something of triumph there, 
In a secret that none might share; 
Something of grim despair, 

And the palsy of nightmare dreaming. 
Thenceforth the wrecker grew 
Dim to the village view, 
Like a wraith of the mountain glen 

Or a shape of the underworld, 
Or the grisly forms that rise 
To fright the wanderer's eyes, 

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Legends of the New World 



From the depths of the murky fen 
Or the blinding desert whirled. 

Oft in the depth of night 

The shoresmen saw his light, 

Wavering here and there 

Like the sw^amp-fire's treacherous glare: 

Often the pallid moon, 

Shining on waste and dune, 

Lighted his bending form, 
Threading the shelly lanes 
Left by the shrunken veins 

Of the last sea-swollen storm: 
Often the coaster far 
Beyond the outer bar, 
Watched how the swimmer sped, 
Cleaving with hand and head, 
The liquid veil of green 
That hid the livelier sheen 
Of the coin, his evil star. 

Once when the tide was low 

Under a growling sky, 
A glimmer of something white 
Tempted him out in the night; 

It flew as the angels fly. 
He clove through the breakers' row 
And the billows, long and low, 
To the blackened waste beyond, 
That was smooth as a landlocked pond 

Where the lily quiverless stands. 

7 6 



Legends of the New World 



Then the glimmer sank through the mere, 
And the depths grew bright and clear 

With a soft unearthly glow, 

Showing the forms below 

That dreamily come and go, 

The sea-weed waving slow 

The beams and the bursting bands, 
And the shattered, gaping deck 
Of the treasure-laden wreck — 

The wreck of The Driven Snow. 

He hung like a bird in the air 
Over a prospect fair, 
Then caught his breath with a gasp, 
And plunged with desperate grasp 

Fathom on fathom down, 
Till he trod the ruined hold, 
With its wealth around him rolled, 
As a diver treads the halls 

Of some vast sea-foundered town; 
And the tide through the oaken walls 
Murmured like waterfalls 

Far-heard o'er a desert brown: 
While ever on either hand, 

Falling with tinkling chime, 
The coin on the floor of sand 

To the liquid notes kept time, 
From shattered keg and coffer 
Beaker-like brimming over 
In a froth of silver and gold. 
Necklace and brooch and ring 
Swung with the sea-weed's swing ; 

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Legends of the New World 



Dangling from bolt and beam 
In the throb of the living seas, 
Eye-like the ruddy gems 
Peeped from beside the stems, 

Swayed with the delicate veil 
Of the sea tapestries; 

And pearls were glimmering pale 
In many a strange device, 

Where the conch had left his trail 
On satins and silks of price, 

Or paused in his horned mail, 
Flush-lipped and all agleam, 

By olden draperies, 
Falling in fold on fold. 



Wild was the soul and gay 
Of haggard Elkin Hay 

In his mine of the ocean floor, 
He fluttered the jewelled strings 
With his frantic gambolings; 
And plunged his arms in the gleam 
Of the coin, and poured a stream 
From upreared hand to hand, 
Down to the satin and sand 

Tinkling and tumbling o'er: 
And all the denizens 

Of the depths of the populous sea 

Fled from his jubilee 
To their hidden hollows and dens. 



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Legends of the New World 



Outward on either side 

The curious mullets flew; 
Backward scuttled the crab 

Rearing his claw r s of blue; 
The sharp-prowed sword-fish hung, 
Like a vessel at anchor swung, 
Doubtfully on the tide ; 
And the squid, that petty kraken, 
Suddenly seemed to waken 
In a flurry of grey and drab, 
And his upward scrambling vied 
With the mushroom forms of the ocean, 
That rose with a throbbing motion, 

A swimming and breathing in one; 
Waving their filmy veils, 
Thrilling their streaming trails, 

Like comets seeking the sun. 



Even the stinger drew 

Sullenly out of view, 

With his deadly lance, and his mouth 

Like the very soul of a drowth, 

And his monstrous flabby head. 
Even the lubberly shark 
Paused in the edge of the dark, 
Showing his creamy throat 
And the deeper tint of his coat, 
His greedy human eyes 
And the cruel fin that plies 

In the wake of the sea-tossed dead. 

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Legends of the New World 



The hardy wrecker dared 

Their wrath in the realm he shared; 

But the time had come to flee, 
For every stifled vein 
Swelled with a fearful strain: 
Upward he sprang amain, 

Cleaving and spurning the sea. 

A draught of the cool night air — 

Oh sweeter than any wine! 
A breath on his brow and hair 

Of perfume that seemed divine: 
A glance at the utter night, 

With its single sorrowful star, 
That scattered its handbreadth of light 

In a pathway of sparkles afar 

On the ripples beyond the bar: 
A glimpse, as he turned his head, 
Of a fine mercurial thread, 

Mellowed with fluent gold, 
Inlaid on an ebon ground: 
A rushing of viewless wings, 
That hissed as the snake ere he stings, 

And out on the watery wold 

A menacing moaning sound: 
Then shapes went hurrying past; 
And, sudden, a mighty blast 
Beat all into chaos around. 



A day had come and gone; 
And again the setting sun 

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Legends of the New World 



Made merry with Elkin Hay, 
Where a corpse had lain before 
On the rainbow-broidered shore, — 

Baffled the wrecker lay. 
And the shoresmen found him there 
With the mocking gold in his hair, 

On his hair and his brow alone; 
A waif of the tempest cast 
On the shore-line hard and vast, 

Shattered in every bone: 
But reaching still with a hand 
That clutched on the solid sand ; 
And holding his hope with his breath 
To the very shadow of death. 

They came in the lessening light, 

A gaunt and pitying crew: 
And still, like forms of the night, 
Stalking, their shadows grew. 
The bronze of their half-lit faces 

Had taken a double hue; 
And their homely garb in places 

Was gemmed with the salt sea-dew. 

Something of wonder and awe 
Woke at the sight they saw; 

And they stood in a listening ring, 
Watching for every word 
From the lips that fluttered and stirred 

Like a journey-wearied wing. 
There was many a hand ungainly 

Arched at the eager ear; 

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Legends of the New World 



Many a finger that vainly 

Warned to a hush austere; 
Many a lift of the brow, 

Many a turn of the eyes ; 
Many a shake of the head 

Slow and solemn and wise; 
For in all grotesqueries 
They could not fail to see 

He was telling the story now 
That he soon must tell to the dead. 



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Legends of the New World 



ELIZABETH OF MENDOTA 

In the lovely land of heavenly-tinted waters, 
Where ten thousand lakelets drink the blue above 

them, 
Till the eye, exploring depth on depth, can follow 
Through the gleams and tremors all the moving 

figures 
Round their hidden fountains, — where the prairie 

rillets, 
Laughing as they journey, seek the broad bright 

rivers, 
And the cataract arches from the shaggy bluffside, 
Falling, ever falling in a veil of silver, — 
Home of sparkling winter! Home of dazzling 

summer ! 
Cloudless Minnesota ! — seek ye there my story. 

Years on years had crowded, forest grown on forest, 
Yet the idle prairies knew not tilth nor changing; 
War and chase and feasting filled the life of all men. 

Only dim traditions told of dreamlike peoples, 
Brightening for a season many a fruitful valley, 
Then departing — whither? — leaving nought behind 

them 
Save the billowy tombs upthrown on loftier sum- 
mits ; 
Where the warrior spirits well might find com- 
panions 
In the wandering breezes and the stars and silence — 
Strange high-hearted races, gliding into darkness. 

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Legends of the New World 



Only from the village by the stony rapids, 

Where the white men bartered in the foam and 

flashing 
And the strong hoarse voices of the Father of 

Waters — 
Only from the clearings raggedly strewn about it, 
Dotting wood and wold with firefly lamps at eve- 
ning, 
Came the first faint menace of far mightier changes. 

Where the bluff juts upward, nude and stained and 

furrowed, 
Crowned with fortress-wall and depth of dim em- 
brasure, 
And the meeting rivers leave a point of meadow, 
Partly over-shaded, gathered in the sunset 
All the crafty wisdom and the boastful valour 
And the credulous weakness of a tribe, to listen 
To the tale of One who bowed His head and strove 

not, 
Though ten thousand angels waited for the onset. 
Grave and still, they hearkened, while the golden 

sunbeam, 
Slanting through the lattice of the leaves and 

branches, 
Streamed between the tree-trunks mossed and 

gnarled and mottled, 
Brightening skin-clad forms bedecked with quills 

and beadwork, 
Fringes of dead hair-like sear December grasses, 
Uncouth bison crests, and trailing eagle feathers : 
Sphinx-like sat and listened, inwardly contemning; 

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Legends of the New World 



Then, in deepening twilight, rose with all decorum, 
Proffering kindly welcome ; and they, rustling, van- 
ished ; 
As their race has vanished from the homes that 
knew them. 

In the outer circle one had bowed attentive, 
With the still enduring look of Indian women: 
Not for her were feathers, beads, and quills and 

painting, 
Not for her the stir, the thrill of life and glory — 
Nothing but the burdens, evermore the burdens! 
So her spirit brightened like a flower at dewfall 
At this strange new teaching, full of hope and 

pity; 
With a ready homage to a power surpassing 
Turbulent strength and fierceness, as the sky sur- 
passes 
All the struggling rivers and the wind-tossed for- 
ests. 

Thenceforth in her musings, and in all the crudeness 
Of her simple labour, still that thought was with 

her, 
Making for its whiteness many-fancied vesture 
From her people's dreams and dim old Nature's 

murmurs, 
Till the Christ and Mary seemed to come like phan- 
toms 
Through the trees at nightfall ; and she heard their 
voices 

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Legends of the New World 



Breathing like slow music o'er the starlit prairie: 
But they ever flitted, and she could not follow. 

Then she sought the preacher, simply, meekly asking 

(Not in tropes borrowed from a dead time's forge- 
work) 

Tidings of that Saviour, where to look and find 
Him, 

"For," said she, "the woods are vast and many-hol- 
lowed, 

And the prairies stretch to the world-ending moun- 
tains 

Where no man has journeyed, and the breezes visit 

Earth and heaven at will ; and where to seek I know 
not." 

Then he answered: "Surely, faith can move the 

mountains ! 
Gor nor man hath witnessed faith like yours, my 

daughter, 
In this age of staleness!" — for his soul was weary 
With the obdurate struggle and the evil round him, 
With the rude frontiersman and the sordid tempter 
And the brutal savage, lumplike mortals, falling 
Faster than he raised them. Yet, because he saw her 
Looking this way, that way, doubtful of his meaning, 
Spake in homelier words, wise-sifted as for chil- 
dren, 
Brushing from her soul the wildflower fancies 

lightly 
As we brush the grape-bloom that we miss when 
vanished ; 

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Legends of the Nezv World 



Pointing out a quest in vaguer wilderness, 
Telling of a voice which ear can never hearken, 
And a light that shines when eyes are past all seeing. 

Then she listened, eager as the least of children, 
With their wayward credence and their keen, deep 

probing, 
Asking breathless questions that no soul can answer. 
Happy at heart she left him, all the doubts and 

queries 
Floating off behind her; for her brain was fevered 
By the high uplifting of the power of worship. 
But his eye went after with a chill misgiving — 
Like a leaden shroud of mist on autumn meadows — 
Whether what he taught her were in truth more 

real 
Than the airy voices and the beckoning figures. 

Soon through all the lodges of her tribal village 

Went an angry rumour; thus the wise men mocked 
her: 

"Strength is loved of women; but this woman wor- 
ships 

A weak stripling paleface, nailed on wood and help- 
less, 

Wailing for his father. Was the Manitou ever 

Scoffed and bound and smitten? Who has laid the 
lashes 

On the god our fathers heard (and we have heard 
him) 

Call, denouncing vengeance, from the inner shadows 

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Legends of the New World 



Of the Wakon Teebee? These are gods to wor- 
ship." 

But she answered, trembling at her impious daring : 
"Who has seen this tenant of the Wakon Teebee? 
Shall I worship voices from an empty cavern? 
Air is full of sounds and earth may have them also. 
Show me of his works, or form and feature show 

me." 
Then the priest, confiding in the cavern terrors, 
Bade her seek its portal, and they entered with her. 

Long and low the archway opened in the cliffside, 
And the beach, the sand-floor, solemn-lighted, shal- 
lowed 
To the thin black margin of a great still water, 
Whose diminished glimmer died to inward darkness. 
Where they stood the councils of the Sioux had 

gathered 
Since dead days forgotten, binding every treaty 
By the awful sanction of the voice that sounded 
Hollow, praising, blaming from the vaults beyond 

them. 
But the sturdiest brave had never passed that mar- 
gin. 

Then one, stooping, seized a crumbling stone and 

flung it, 
And it fell invisible with a leaden plashing — 
How unlike a fall in open sunlit waters! — 
And the prisoned voices of the inner shadow 
Answered with due pauses, like retreating armies, 

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Legends of the New World 



Till again the silence settled all around them. 
Soon, a visible echo, something glided outward, 
Ruffling the dull water with no sound of motion, 
Touched upon the sand its prow and swayed un- 

guided, 
Light as frothy scrolls of troubled wasps' enwinding. 



In she stepped before a solemn-plumed magician, 
And all outer life failed in the void behind them. 
Widely shone their torchlight on the Stygian mirror, 
Painting, as they sped, its own fierce smoky likeness, 
For no wall was seen nor any prop nor pillar, 
Save where fancy-changeful dim stalactite shadows 
Peered and mowed and hovered, till she closed her 

eyelids. 
Then a rush of many wings went by her, o'er her, 
And a multitudinous sound of shrieking voices; 
And she felt that surely she had heard the clamour 
Of the fiends rejoicing; for her breathless glimpses 
Caught the spine-winged shapes that gibbering 

wheeled and flittered 
In and out the light, with many-angled darting 
From the ruinous walls that hemmed their narrow 

passage, 
Here, like cliffs fantastic of some river canon 
In the wild sierras — here o'erarching grimly 
Where the faint low ripples gurgled in the black- 
ness, 
Dipping there and shelving like a golden seabeach, 
Scrawled with veined inscriptions of the worlds 
far dawning. 

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Legends of the New World 



Then there came a murmur, like a song forgotten, 
Vague and sweet, but swelling louder, fuller, wider, 
Till its liquid thunder rolled and echoed round her, 
Leaped from pile and buttress, broke on crag and 

cornice, 
Clashed along the roof in swift reverberations, 
Smote upon the water, stunning sense and spirit. 
Then she gasped and waited — helpless, hopeless, 

stricken : 
For the downward plunging in the cataract chaos; 
But her feathered Charon sitting stern, impassive, 
Took the torchlight grandly on his granite features ; 
And the boat moved onward with no slightest effort, 
Till it left the arch and lay in sudden splendor. 



Temple-dome of Baise wrought in snow of Paphos, 
Blazing in the rows of ever-lighted tapers 
Never yet outbrightened that w 7 hite holy of holies, 
That deep hymning home of many-thundering 

echoes, 
Awful as the psalm of dim archangels prisoned, 
Singing what they sang with surge of mighty music 
At the glad creation. Full and far upswelling, 
All the roof was hung with jewel-icicled pendants; 
Milky, pearl-tipped, rolled in voluming rings and 

fringes, 
Diamond-crusted here, and there pale sapphire 

tinted, 
Lapped by luminous ruby; and the walls were 

drifted, 
As the fields and ways are drifted in midwinter, 

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Legends of the New World 



With the sparkling folds of ribbed and winding 

wave-work ; 
And the air was full of spray-mist and of rainbows, 
From the shattering fall of mingled foam and water, 
In a long thin scarf that curved and gleamed trans- 
lucent, 
Like a goddess' tresses wind-blown on the moun- 
tains ; 
Only half concealing something strange and shift- 
ing 
That she deemed unearthly. Dancing plumes the 

maiden 
Saw, and limbs colossal, fair and white as hoar-frost, 
And a beard like mosses long and silvered, vibrant 
In the hollow wood depths at the breath of Autumn. 



More than this she saw not, for her pilot, hissing 
In her ear — "The spirit of the Wakon Teebee!" 
Turned as one in terror, and with swift blade- 
flashes 
Drove them through the archway toward the outer 

cavern. 
Awe was on the girl, and palsied vigilant terror 
Of the something hurrying swift and sure behind 

them, 
Of the crushing gloom and thronging powers of evil ; 
But she felt the glad light throbbing in her spirit, 
As one buried feels the blows that burst his charnel, 
When the first faint gleam came kindly to her vision. 



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Legends of the New World 



Soon she leaped to land, and rushed half swooning 

outward, 
And the birds sang round rejoicing in her freedom. 
Not a word she spake to bird or man or woman, 
Lying as one dazed, while the slow sun went west- 
ward. 
But upon the morrow, calmed again though weary, 
She made answer: "Truly I have seen the spirit, 
Wrapped in mighty noises and the glistening water, 
Thin as running hazes in the noon of summer, 
Awful as the figures thronging clouds at twilight, 
But as chill as snow-mist, and as far from pity. 
Let the warriors bow before a shape majestic 
And a voice of terror: weakness loves compassion, — 
I will seek my Saviour!" 



So when lilies whitened 

Half the lake's clear round with cups of rarest in- 
cense, 

Each on long lithe stalk with gracious motion sway- 
ing, 

Like the airy head of some coquettish beauty, 

Came the young Sioux maid, light stepping, to the 
margin, 

Where the preacher stood with book and robe and 
witness ; 

And behind her thronged, with uncouth guttural 
murmur, 

All the idle life that filled the basking village. 

Then a hush fell on them, and they hearkened 
grimly, 

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Legends of the New World 



With some faint soul-shadow from remembered 

terrors 
Of dim moonlit glens and powah incantations, 
To the alien words of half elusive meaning 
In the mystic rite of veiled symbolic beauty. 

Blurred with doubt, the glory of that olden ritual 
Left his heart who uttered (inly wroth for doubt- 
ing), 
Flowing from his lips in more majestic cadence, 
Sweeter in its strength of self-assuring sureness. 
Unto her who listened, doubt and dimness were not, 
Tranced in love and faith and inner-gloried vision, 
Like his soul who sought the wanfaced anchorite's 

blessing. 
But no portent shone nor sounded out of heaven, 
And no dove came down but the white dove of 

gladness : 
And Elizabeth rose, the name herself had chosen. 

Often did she seek her friend of friends thereafter, 
Listening, meek of soul, the lowliest of disciples, 
Till the glory-mist that hung about her vision 
Haloed round his head; and when she thought of 

Heaven, 
Still she saw her teacher; and his words were with 

her 
Like a seraph's, message, — brave words, wrung by 

duty 
From a soul on fire with swift and sure upheaval; 
Reverent of her peace, yet envious of that Eden : 
As a voyager borne by some enchanted islet 

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Legends of the New World 



Holds his breath for fear its slumber may be broken, 
Though the grand free ocean claims his soul and 

draws it, 
So his every tone grew tender as a lover's, 
And she heard with joy, unmindful of his conscience. 

And her face grew rich as some wood-darkened wild- 
flower 
When its red leaves feel a darting sunbeam flush 

them, 
As he told her fondly, with a playful gladness : 
"Farewell for awhile! Elizabeth, I am going 
Back to my old home by the great bitter water, 
Whence the sun uplifts, as here from wood and 

prairie. 
But he will not often rise before, returning, 
I will show you what will surely make you happy ; 
For no heart is kinder than your heart is, Bessie, — 
Kind as sunshine!" So he pressed her hand and left 

her, 
Glancing blithely back with eye of bright rewarding, 
Planning glad surprises as we plan for children. 
And the strife of creeds and ache of doubt and duty 
Left him for a season. 

Then Elizabeth waited, 
Watching day by day beside the village landing 
How the trailing cloud came slowly up the river, 
And the shapeless speck took bulk and form, and 

rounded, 
With wide fling of ropes and sway and thud and 

crowding. 
Patiently she sat, without a word of answer 

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Legends of the New World 



To the idler's jeer and laughter-moving sally; 
For her soul was full of settled calm assurance, 
Like clear waters tranced in the still glow of sun- 
set. 
When at last she saw his face above the gangway, 
Every pulse leaped up with joyous thrill exulting, — 
Then sank sickly back as one may sink o'erwearied, 
And a weight of woe rolled on her heart and crushed 

it; 
For a girlish face was blooming by his shoulder, 
Full of proud confiding, crowned with sunny tresses, 
Blithe in bridal glory. 

So Elizabeth shuddered, 
Then, without a moan, turned dumbly in her 

traces — 
Moved along the streets with set impassive features, 
Noiseless as a cloud or swift forerunning shadow — 
Pierced the depth of forest, as those wild things 

pierce it 
That the night knows well, until she reached a hol- 
low 
Where the leafy gloom o'erhung the mossy wrap- 
pings 
Of a trunk that turned to mould, yet kept its out- 
line, 
Proffering softest cushioned couch; and there she 

rested. 
O'er the fairy cups of shadowed alabaster 
Trailed her fingers, and the waxen fire-tipped lichens 
Stung a fierce red life in the red limbs that touched 
them, 

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Legends of the New World 



And her heaving body; and her tense outbreathing 
Was as winds that come, thick-swollen, before the 

tempest 
With no fall of rain. Then on a bough above her 
Dropped a mock-bird, and he made a jest of living; 
And the streamlet's voice came void of soul, and 

hollow 
As a tinkling bell, and she was lorn and baffled ; 
And her mouldering couch seemed love and hope 

and all things. 
Then from out the shades arose dim forms and 

wrestled, — 
One the mist-plumed vision of the Wakon Teebee, 
Prompting vengeful rites and thirsty hate that 

spares not, 
Treachery's venomous crawl, and all stored ills of 

ages! 
But the other form was his who came at evening, 
Less a form than voice, a music o'er the prairie, 
Full of helpful love and sweet sustaining pity: 
And within her heart it grew, till shame came on 

her, 
And she sat bowed down, with scarce a breath or 

motion, 
Like to one unclean ; yet thankful, hateless, loving. 



Years went by, and changed the land of lakes sky- 
tinted ; 
For the white men spread in ever-widening circles, 
And her race went backward like the foam's re- 
ceding, 

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Legends of the New World 



Sullen, doubting, doubted, storing wrath unspoken, 
Knowing that the world rejoiced to see them vanish. 

Still, along the line of ever-shifting border, 

In the lonely homesteads ringed by gathering peril, 

One dark kindly face, one noiseless step, found wel- 
come ; 

Winning thanks from hatred, trust from grim sus- 
picion 

By compassionate deeds — the logic of the angels ; 

Till the children knew the good squaw Bess who 
cured them, 

And it seemed that all hearts turned to her in 
trouble, 

As to one who failed not. Curves that youth made 
comely, 

From her face had vanished ; chiefs no longer wooed 
her; 

But the sunshine dwelt there, and its light was holy, 

Though the fond illusions of her soul had fallen, 

As the varnished sheaths of spring fall, lightly tap- 
ping, 

When the buds are ripe for fuller life and beauty. 

Yet she shunned his presence, fearing inner voices, 
Like the ebon birds that break the morning pean 
With their file-like squeak and hoarse harsh metal- 
line crackle. 
But at last he met her with such cordial urgence, 
Such reproving mirth for long-endured estrange- 
ment, 
That her heart grew shamefaced, and she felt half- 
grateful 

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Legends of the New World 



(Though with some slight sting of wonder at his 

blindness) 
Listening, staidly smiling, to the cheery trifles, 
Ripples on his home-life, giving all its sparkle, 
Childish pranks and games, and merry talk and mis- 
chief, 
And the small wise sayings of his boy and girl folk. 

Then his voice grew troubled, and the brightness 
left him. 

"You, Elizabeth, you/' he said, "whom I have chris- 
tened, 

Roused my earliest doubts by querying as they 
query — 

Doubts that once were torment, till I knew my duty. 

God forgive me ! God have mercy on that teacher 

Who must speak, yet knows not of the thing he ut- 
ters ; 

On a dizzy height in whirling currents balanced, 

Swaying, straining, gasping, dreading above all 
things 

For the priceless weal of souls who cling and trust 
him; 

While they call through night for prophecies of 
dawning 

Where he sees no glimmer, praying that his magic 

Smite the earthquake still, and turn to adamant 
stable 

All the riven foundations! — God have mercy on 
him ! 

Now that woe is past, for I will teach no longer 

Where half-speech is falsehood and the truth eludes 
me. 

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Legends of the New World 



I will guide no more on paths unknown, and blinded 
By the coiling mist that mimics forms supernal — 
Changing, swerving, mocking. God is far beyond 

me; 
And I know no more than any child that passes. 
Who was I to teach you?" 

Then Elizabeth answered : 

"Even the children, surely, could have shown their 
elders 

Where to find the Jesus who had kissed and blessed 
them. 

You have made me more in life and soul, and bet- 
ter! 

Surely that was well?" 

Whereto he answered, smiling: 
"Good seed clings to you, and all the shells fall off 

it. 
Not the less I feel I dare not speak half-falsehood, 
Though the truth it shrouds may chance to yield a 

blessing. 
So to-morrow morning sees me quit the vineyard 
Where I laboured long, and long had hope to labour. 
Many there will be to blame and doubt and leave 

me; 
You will come, Elizabeth? come, and see my chil- 
dren." 

So Elizabeth came to where the farmer-preacher 
Dwelt among his w T heat-fields ; and the kind wife 

met her 
Cheerly, yet with mind indwelling on the changes 

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Legends of the New World 



That had come, or cast foreshadows of their com- 
ing— 
On the chill, dead zeal, the mission that had van- 
ished, 
And the clinging scorn that wrapped the honoured 

pulpit, 
In the name of Christ condemning the outspoken. 
But the children came without a shade of doubting, 
Save for stranger ways and features that they knew 

not. 
And Elizabeth stooped, and laid her hand in kindness 
On the girl's smooth forehead: but it shrank in- 
stinctive, 
For the kindness vanished in a mad upsurging 
From the veins of red ancestral natures, 
Grim as Norseland myths, the storm-born race that 

spared not; 
And her quick hot greed, athirst like crisping fever, 
Saw those tendril threads of sunlight trailing head- 
less, 
Bloody from the knife that wreaked a circling ven- 
geance. 
Like a summer-cloud, ruddy and swart with fury, 
Swooped that horror; — then it left her stricken, 

trembling, 
Full of tales of souls where demons made their 

dwelling, 
And of ghostly seizures braving God's own good- 
ness. 

Then they gathered round, marking the Sioux 

squaw waver 
In the fiery sun, and led her into shelter, 

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Legends of the New World 



Plying fan-wrought breezes, proffering drinks and 

viands : 
But none guessed her secret; and the child that 

shuddered 
Came once more beside her, eager, pitying, fearless. 
From that hour she loved the young girl as a mother 
Loves her dearest. And thereafter grew her visits 
Frequent and more frequent, welcome and more 

welcome, 
Watching, as we watch the drifting clouds, the 

drama 
Passing high above her in a fire-tried spirit. 

And the daughter, warming to this dusky ally, 
As she grew in years to more than childhood's beauty 
(Like the tender things that come 'twixt bud and 

leaflet, 
Fay-winged, sunny-tinted), oft in oaken shadows, — 
While the robins stood astrut like redbreast soldiers, 
Or with bayonet-beak held low and all aglimmer 
Charged and rose again, or plucked with sidelong 

motion, 
And the sleek slow blackbird watched with eye sa- 
gacious, 
And the squirrel sat self-canopied above them, 
Mumbling food they flung him, — told of ills that 

deadened 
All the breezy life and summer warmth and beauty. 
For her father's words took shape that woke dire 

echoes 
In the hearts and tongues of those who heard and 

hated, 
Till he found in man no truth, in God no kindness. 

IOI 



Legends of the New World 



Calmly through it all Elizabeth listened, cheering, 
But her words of comfort were more vague than 

flashes 
On the hot horizon, where the storm is silent ; 
And the ills of life, though often self-inflicted, 
Grew to monstrous wrongs, and evil fellowship 

claimed him. 
Then the bolt of death fell on his house unlooked 

for, 
Smiting to chill calm the little heart that loved 

him, — 
She the third and least, the loveliest latest comer, 
She who leaned and reached with shrill bright baby 

triumph 
For her sister's locks, and clutched them o'er the 

cradle, 
Laughing with their laughter; she who lay enten- 

drilled 
In her tent of vines, and crooned among their 

fringes 
Like a new-born dryad; she who clung appealing, 
With that old, old look w T hich stabs such lasting 

terror, 
When the weird wings swooped and the dim talons 

rent her. 
Tender flickering light, that shone above the thresh- 
old 
Of earth's joy and beauty, then went out in dark- 
ness ! 
Ah! the old may die, but they have lived; we lay 

them, 
After long delights, in beds where all must follow ; 

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Legends of the New World 



But for those who come and see not, taste not, feel 
not, 

Save one fleeting glimpse, one touch that wakes 
their longing, 

All the life within them fighting, straining for it, 

Till the pulse grows listless and the eye lacks 
knowledge, 

And they pass from pain to the great rounding 
silence ! — 

Chill must be that heart, barren and thorny- 
weeded, 

Where the fiery woe, the brand, of such a passing 

Eats not deeply lifelong. All things round his 
homestead, 

Hall and porch and lawn, were peopled blanks 
that stung him, 

As he toiled for two where three had claimed his 
labour, 

And he bowed and crept and felt his life half crip- 
pled ; 

And his heart yearned out to all mankind, w T ho 
suffered 

Even as he had suffered. Then he heard the whis- 
pers 

Of blaspheming cant that dares to w T ing God's 
arrows, 

Draping His great form in paltry weeds of judg- 
ment: 

And in kindlier tones he found condemning pity. 

So, he set his brow and bore his household north- 
ward, 

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Legends of the New World 



Where a band of exiles, fiercely grappling freedom, 
Hating with dire hate their old-world crowns and 

bondage, 
Swore in this new soil to plant the tree of promise, 
With no cankering faith nor graft of nightshade 

fancies. 
So their village shone in novel surface brightness, 
And the hills around were hung with haunts of 

pleasure ; 
Where on Sabbath morns the reveller's call and 

clinking 
Sounded, but no bell, no word of solemn warning, 
Not one voice to speak of greater things hereafter. 



So Elizabeth lost her friends from sight and knowl- 
edge, 
While the boy grew man, the girl became a woman, 
And full comfort spread in all their small belong- 
ings. 
But the mother's face was rarely free from trouble, 
And the daughter's wore a strange pathetic wisdom ; 
And the father felt a hot storm labouring, panting 
Under nature's eaves; for ribald scoffing round him 
On his human heart, no longer bigot-baited, 
Fell like devil-whips that wound their glutinous 

poison, 
Till the dim prophetic sense of hastening ruin 
Made all outer things seem light as shifting vapour, 
And his soul a trump of vast denunciations 
Not his own, nor human. 



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Legends of the New World 



Cooped and chafed and savage, 
Robbed of all their land and mocked with broken 

treaties, 
Driven westward, westward, with no hope of chang- 
ing, 
Gathered swarthy forms from all the land of waters 
For one desperate outburst. There Elizabeth met 

thenv 
Urging patient peace and good returned for evil, 
Picturing all the ills that strife would bring, and 

pleading, 
With her whole heart flung in every word she 

uttered. 
But their veins were hot; and one by one uprising, 
In wild eloquent phrase, caught from the hills and 

prairies 
And the swift shrill winds that wail at night along 

them, 
Heaped they fire on fire with tales of wrong un- 

righted, 
Till a half-grown youth leaped nimbly in the circle, 
Brandishing high and red his long knife in the sun- 
light, 
And a piteous prize of thin grey hair outstreaming. 
Then a cry arose like wolves, and men were devils; 
And the dread cyclone whirled forth in ruin and 

chaos. 

Now the day had come of earth's deep tale of pathos, 
Day that knits the hearts of ocean-sundered peo- 
ples! 
And from all the village, blind and giddy-hearted, 

105 



Legends of the New World 



Gathered masking mummers, clothed in quaint de- 
vices 
Of old Jewish robes and broad phylacteries, 
Quaint pontifical garb and loose-flung Roman toga, 
Peasant dress of Galilee, shrouds and angel pinions. 
Then the pageant wound, with rude derisive laugh- 
ter, 
Through the streets, that rang as though again old 

Salem 
Poured its evil crew to jeer and point and gibber 
On the road to Calvary. In their front was carried, 
By a scrawny beast, whose long ears drooped and 

draggled, 
One who bore a cross above his thorn-crowned fore- 
head, 
Blear-eyed, haggard-cheeked, a hideous unlike like- 
ness, 
Chanting as he rode, and quaffing as he chanted ; 
And behind him came a manger-bearing Mary, 
With great maudlin flow of tears and drunken 

outcry ; 
And a leering John, whose long locks showed a 

woman, — 
"He whom Jesus loved!" And all the rabble fol- 
lowed, 
Strewing little leaves of winter-moulded fodder, 
Yellow pine-leaf needles, furry foxglove branches, 
And the trailing nettles of the poison ivy, 
Shouting — "Palms! Hosannah to the King of 
Glory!" 

Thus they reached a space whose central summit 
opened 

1 06 



Legends of the New World 



Vision of far fields and woods and scattered home- 
steads. 
There a form strode forth, and stayed them with a 

gesture ; 
And his shadow fell upon them like deep silence ; 
And his voice had all the hoarse forerunning menace 
Of swift stormful clouds, that rise and flush and 

darkle, 
Driven by power beyond them. "Men," he cried, 

"what mean ye? 
Gnats that buzz and drone along the blazing 

prairie, 
Sparks that stir the mine and vanish in its blazing! 
God is very near — on eye and heart and spirit: 
God is here, here, here! in wrath and power and 

terror ! 
Here in earth that wakes to thrill and crumble and 

shatter ; 
Here in skies that rain red arrows of destruction ! — 
Look, and listen!" 

Then away to north and westward 
Thick-wreathed clouds of smoke went up behind 

the woodlands, 
Like the sooty coils of Ashtaroth's evil altars. 
All the roads were flecked with hurrying forms; the 

inmates 
Poured from every house to join that mad hegira ; 
And a faint wild sound of many tones commingled 
Came from far beyond, like night-winds heard in 

dreaming. 
And each masquer felt an unseen hand laid on him, 

107 



Legends of the New World 



Gaunt with blank surmise and many-questioning 

peril. 
Then again that voice of deep denunciation — 
"Seek your homes, your homes, and look dread 

Desolation 
In the face: he comes wild-winged and will not 

tarry. 
You have called the fiends, and fiends are trooping 

on you." 



Then a cry arose, aghast and lone and dismal, 

And the rabble flew at random hither, thither, 

Like Sprawled water-skimmers startled in their 
dances ; 

While their warner stood as one who wakes half- 
dazzled, 

Fitting words to thoughts, for truly he had spoken 

But as trumpets speak when mouthed by mighty 
voices, 

Knowing not half he said. Then sudden terror 
stung him, 

And he sought his horse and fled in silence home- 
ward, 

Passing one by one, swift forms that warned and 
gestured, 

Till the last was gone, and still the loved ones came 
not, 

And his house lay furlongs on beyond. He saw it 

Door-wide and deserted, and dire thoughts were 
busy. 

Then a figure, hardy as the chinquapin bushes, 

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Legends of the New World 



From a clump before him leaped; he stared and 
halted, 

With swift rearward rein, and sudden slide and 
scramble. 

"Elizabeth, you!" he cried. "Where are they? say 
for God's sake." 

"Safe!" she answered. — "Safe! and I will guard 
and guide them. 

Seek them in St. Paul when all is done and ended. 

Now you cannot seek, for there is death between 
you — 

Death around, ahead! this very road is ambushed. 

They are safe, I tell you — hasten! turn and hasten!" 

As she spoke, she vanished ; and he sat a moment 

Doubtful; then he wheeled, and sped hot-spurring 
backward, 

While dusk fancy-visions flitted with poised weapons 

Through the woods beside him; every vacant door- 
way 

Gaped with possible death, and even the fence-row 
bushes 

Took the shapes they take by moonless roads at mid- 
night. 

All the village streets were crowded, as he entered, 

With a human herd, like penned deer quivering, 
huddling — 

Gasping like speared salmon; all their masque bra- 
vado 

Gone, and nothing left that even a curse could cling 
to. 

Surely all had perished ; but some sturdier spirits — 

Men who scoffed not, quailed not, drawn from wood 
and prairie — 

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Legends of the New World 



Resolute-handed seized the work that wrought sal- 
vation ; 
Till the chaos threw a straggling rampart round it, 
Such as freshets throw to bar their own uprising, — 
Shell that bent not, shattered not in the sudden 

rushes, 
When the ground was thick with shadowy forms 

of evil, 
And the air was wild with hell-taught screaming 

noises ! 
Shell that held its line through all the nearing 

leaguer, 
While lead-spray drove in at every gap and crevice, 
And the falling arrows lighted thatch and lintel, 
And derisive voices shouted out of covert 
All the coming woes of shameless lust and hatred. 

Meantime through the land Elizabeth and her 

charges 
Fled, with all the wiles that wood and wold had 

taught her, 
From the merciless storm that searched their in- 
most refuge; 
For, where all was sweet as day-dreams, stiffening 

corpses 
Often warned them back; and oft their nightly 

pathway 
Reddened with swift gleams from burning homes, 

whose tenants 
Fled far eastward; or their noonday sleep was 

broken 
By such wails as scarce could come from human 

anguish — 

1 10 



Legends of the New World 



Tramp of dancing feet and high ecstatic laughter, 
Lingering hour by hour, till moans died out in 
silence. 

Oh the blast of Hell that swept through all that 

region ! 
Oh the wordless woe and blind outspeeding Terror ! 
Wide-armed Panic's rush o'er all things that we 

cherish ! 
Hate's shrill-screaming swoop to seize the prey she 

flung him! 
Tottering forms that clung to sick-beds, wan and 

gasping, 
No friend left, and full of utter hearkening horror ; 
Playful cradled babes that knew not of their peril ; 
Slight-limbed weary girls, and men of fourscore, 

calling 
As struck bisons call when the herd thunders by 

them 
And the wolves come quickly. Fright, the grim 

enchantress, 
Scattered at one breath the cobweb growth of ages: 
Men were beasts again, and, bellowing, fled for 

safety. 

But God's gleaning angel came to that dire harvest, 

Snatching ear by ear to swell the sheaf she car- 
ried, 

Sick at heart with dread for all her growing bur- 
den, 

Worn in body and soul with constant strain of 
forecast, 

in 



Legends of the New World 



Guarding all their rest and crippled dragging prog- 
ress, 

Till it almost seemed that viewless walls were round 
them, 

Like the sworded rim of interdicted Eden. 

So the year's young wakening in the half-clad forest 

Was a thing they noted plainlier and more plainly. 

When Elizabeth lightly thrid the aisles, to hover, 
As the epaulet-shouldered blackbird hangs swift flut- 
tering, 
Silent, dubious, shifting with the form he watches, 
In some hidden nook sat Julia and her mother, 
While the children played, and heartening youth 

stood sentry, 
Mindful of her face far more than outer danger, 
And the old folk basked and listened to sweet music 
Where the full stream sang with midway rush of 

dimples 
And smooth sidelong reach of slow-reversing eddies ; 
Or the cataract teased the light twigs in its falling; 
Or long formless sounds, like Nature's gathering 

voices 
Ere she speaks, came to them through damp vaults, 

where only 
One slim forest finger swayed, as if in warning; 
Or etherial waves kissed breezily on the fringes 
Of some rustling islet. And the young girl gathered 
With light hand the fragile scentless early blossoms, 
Fairy heralds sent before the queens of summer; 
Small horned violets white, fine pencilled yellow 
throated, 

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Legends of the New World 



Delicate fan-veined pink-cups, juicy of stalk and 

pungent, 
Four-rayed Bethlehem stars, pale-blue like noonday 

sky tints, 
Wire-stemmed windflower feathers, ever airily 

dancing, 
And all living flecks that snow among the grasses, 
Brightening where they fall. Elizabeth brightened 

likewise 
When she came grim-weary from her lonesome 

vigils 
And weak hopeless thoughts, and found the fresh 

young beauty- 
Crowned with sister blooms and light of fondest 

welcome. 

Yet the shades came back and brought a growing 

struggle, 
In the solemn night of evil-peopled forests, 
With old outworn taints and wrongs she thought 

forgiven, 
Working more and more as her faint pulse grew 

fainter 
And the days seemed endless. Yet she held her 

purpose, 
As the steersman, reeling in the smoke and vapour 
And thick driving flame, clings fast with crisping 

fingers 
To the bar he sees not, and drives on to safety. 
So at last she gained her port, and dropped o'er- 

wearied, 
Bearing threescore lives from hell-fire into shelter. 

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Legends of the New World 



And they called her old, for she was browed and 

furrowed 
As by many years — "Old Betz!" and half forgot 

her, 
Till they drove her forth to exile, with her people. 

For the lordlier race had yielded but to gather 

In piled waves before that wrenching cyclone, 

whirling 
From unwarning skies; then burst the airy tether, 
In full head of wrath, flooding the land with ven- 
geance. 
Far they fled and wild the nightmare shapes of 

darkness, 
Breathless and aghast at the dread power they 

wakened, 
Scourging heavy and fell. Thus the long rush and 

fury 
Flowed and ebbed and flowed, and left the land 

exhausted, 
Strewn with rafterless walls and blackening heaps 

of hamlets. 
And in midst of all the stolid herd of captives, 
With their fiendlike fierceness quelled, and nought 

remaining 
But the endless power to endure, and some vainglory 
In past wreck and horror. 

Scarce the loathing victors 
In that brutish reek of crime and evil presence 
Marked, could mark, the few, the nobler for such 

setting, 
Who had done unseen their full heroic duty, — 

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Legends of the New World 



Saving those who scorned them — shielding those 
who hated — 

Striving in God's cause while all things went with 
Satan — 

Braving steel and fire when wiser ones had van- 
ished ! 

Garb and hue alone seemed certain test and war- 
rant: 

So a cry went up, and all were hurried westward, 

Out across the plains and o'er the turbid river, 

Where the mountain peaks looked grimly from the 
distance, 

Cold as fate. 

But ere she took this weary journey, 
Worn Elizabeth came to see her dying. teacher 
(Smitten nigh the heart in the last direst onset, 
Spurred by hastening rescue), while the loved ones 

round him 
Watched the ebbing life and counted hours in 

silence ; 
But he moved his hand, and said aloud: "God bless 

you! 
Many winds have blown and waters used me 

roughly, 
But at last the end draws near and troubles lessen, 
As rough paths grow smooth while the horizon 

widens 
And still heights endow the eye with juster vision. 
Errors once adored, then spurned, seem childlike 

wrappings, 
Scarce worth stripping, of the truth they cover. 

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Legends of the New World 



God, I know, is good ; for He, almighty, chooses 
Growth for His one law, that all things branch and 

greaten, — 
Mist through plant and beast to man and angel 

rising, 
Blending, flowing still, a deepening broadening river, 
Out of gloom to light, from light to wordless 

glories, 
Dimly prophesied yet, but certain in the distance. 
Even the eddies sparkle with the rays they turn 

from. 
Ah! in truth I know that life is good — God made 

it; 
Yea, all lives that are, and fear not for the future: 
Whether in His sight it seemeth best to send me 
Once again through flesh, in these familiar mem- 
bers, 
Babe to manhood growing; or for loftier uses, 
In unwonted form, to learn in some far planet 
Powers undreamed to serve and strive and err and 

suffer ; 
Or in some dim rest, with all the quiet spirits 
Wait upon His will, as all the chaos waited, 
Till the fiat come; or, wingless messenger, slanting 
Through the yielding air and thin unclogging ether, 
Flash from world to world on His glad timeless 

errands ; 
Or, in crowned delights no mortal mind may figure, 
Walk for endless days with those who love and 

praise Him, 
In great shower of light and cooling shift of shadow, 



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Legends of the New World 



And clear murmurous sounds like changeful rivulet 

music, 
And sweet varying odours fresh as ocean breezes, — 
Sure, where'er I go, that those I love shall follow, 
Those I lost await me: for His voice has spoken, 
And my heart has heard Him." And he passed ere 

morning. 

Then, as in a dream, she journeyed with the exiles 
Till the sun, w T hich set at first behind the prairie, 
Gilded cloudy peaks afar at every nightfall: 
And they grew and grew in their great lonely 

menace, 
Weighing on her spirit like old heathenesse rising 
O'er her later life. Her childish kindred sported 
In new homes, or lolled and basked and mocked her, 
But behind the child she shuddered at the demon ; 
And they paid her blame with threats of future ven- 
geance 
For her faithless balk of spoil and torment-pleasure. 
And her heart ached sadly for loved solemn places, 
Summoning bells and chants and the deep thrill of 

w r orship, 
And one fair young face. Thus ever, as she brooded, 
Trouble grew apace: until she rose, half-maddened 
By unbearable thought, and crept off through the 

gloaming, 
No man asking "Whither?" But her face was east- 
ward. 

In the dark and day she toiled across the prairie: 
Suns arose and sank, and each sun brought its peril, 

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Legends of the New World 



From the hostile tribes that roamed for scalps; the 
panther 

Crouched by river fringe; or grass-hid rattling ser- 
pents ; 

Sudden whirlwind swoops; or blazing roar of 
prairies, 

With the multitudinous rush of all things living 

Hurried on before in wide-awakening clamour. 

Yet each danger passed, and bitterest herbs were 
sweetened 

By the thought that every step brought nearer, 
nearer, 

Though so hopeless far, the magnet of her being. 

And at night, w T hen all was gone but God and 
voices 

Of great Nature, and the lights that darkness 
wakens 

In the heavens and earth, the unseen world drew 
near her; 

And there came at times on fevered flagging pulses 

And spent nerves, a sense of some all-gracious pres- 
ence, 

And low promises breathed in dreamy ears that 
listened, 

Till full slumber fell and wrapped her, prayerful 
smiling. 

So she reached at last the prairie rim, and listened 
To the whish of winds on solid flattening cedars, 
Rustling orchard leaves, and farmyard calls of 

homesteads, 
Spreading once again in tidal lines far westward. 

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Legends of the New World 



And through all the land the praise of her endur- 
ance 

And great love went forth, and won her kindly 
service. 

So she found a home in beautiful Mendota, 

Near the spot where first she heard of Christ, and 
nearer 

The dear house of God by the clear sweeping river. 

Now the sunshine falls upon her grave soft-sodded ; 

And bright flowerets bloom, unseen by her; and 
music, 

That she hears not, breathes from the long wind- 
swept branches 

And the deepening aisle where hearts and tones com- 
mingle 

In full praise ; and all the life of man and nature 

That she loved rolls on, as though a very shadow 

Came and left it in her birth and dying. 

Yet she has her God — the God of hero-spirits, 

Who not meanly live, but strive to keep His like- 
ness, 

Doing to the full their duty as He gives it, 

Toiling for the right in love's supreme endeavour. 

Leave her there in faith: and surely, through the 
ages, 

Now and then some heart shall warm to higher 
service 

At the thought of what she wrought, the fond and 
faithful, 

With all hopeful care and strong unyielding effort. 

119 



Legends of the New World 



THE LIGHTS OF MARBLEHEAD 

By the curving shore and the dozing town 

A bark, the Gloucester, lay; 
She waited for wind and she waited for tide 

And the dawn of another day: 

And for something surer than dawn or tide, 

A something no man might flee, 
For the hour that was set by the will of God 

And the wrath of His awful sea. 

They walked at eve by the lapping bay, 

And they saw the waves afire; 
And he said : "There's a light in yonder home 

And a light on yonder spire. 

"And dear is our earthly light, my love, 

And holy the light from heaven: 
But these, they are neither of God nor man 

And they come like the spirits driven. 

"I have watched them cling to the shaken mast 
And gleam with the leer of Sin. — 

Woe, woe to the town of Marblehead 
When the waves come burning in." 

Wan was the wife as the moon in storms, 
But she said: "They are all His own. 

Not less the sea-fires vague and fierce 
Than the lights around the throne. 

1 20 



Legends of the New World 



"And if it be true they indeed do bear 

The tidings of things to be, 
O God by the faith I have held and hold 

May their message bring peace to me." 

In the breath of morn from the eyes of men 

Seaward the Gloucester sped ; 
And with her the hope of three-score homes 

In the village of Marblehead. 

But they felt no fear on the storm-loved cape, 
And they hushed no sound of mirth ; 

Save one lone woman who watched and waned, 
As the bark had waned from earth. 

And now the lights were in all the air 

And the lights were on all the sea ; 
And one dim figure was waiting there 

For the tidings of things to be. 

Still, as she gazed, over three-score homes, 

The homes of the vanished crew, 
In a strange wild flight, the wavering light 

Of the fire that burned not flew. 



And she bowed her down with a wailing cry 

In a tremor of woe and dread, 
For she knew that the heart of the loved and gone 

Was the heart of the loved and dead. 

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Legends of the New World 



Yet she seemed to hear through the deep-toned surf 

As she sank by the sea-wall dim 
An inner voice that was far but clear : 

"They are living all, to Him." 






122 



POEMS OF MEDITATION 



THE COUNSEL OF THE HILLS 

Having told tales, 
And growing over weary in the telling, 

Since nought avails, 
I would take counsel in the inmost dwelling 
Of that which no man knows, but each man feels 
upwelling. 

Here on my hill, 
While the wide heavens and silent stars wheel by 
me, 
And all athrill 
One far wild whisper breathes insistent nigh me, 
Borne through the signalling boughs, to allure, 
elude, defy me. 

Our river's voice 
Urging the rapids with low resolute roar, 

Man's toil and joys 
Upmurmuring dreamily from town and shore, 
The fields' fine tremulous choir, exulting more and 
more. 

I hear them all, 
And feel profoundly unto all akin; 

Feel, too, the wall 
That hems us every way unpierced though thin. 
Oh that some straining soul may let sure brightness 



in! 



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Legends of the New World 



What should one say, 
When half a hundred years have passed him by, 

To shed some ray 
On life that still must live until it die; 
To make both life and death more clear to mortal 
eye? 



Have I not seen 
In many a phase the weaving world of man ? 

And on His screen 
Great shadows wrought, where whoso will may scan 
The vast processional of God's stupendous plan ? 



Our circling isle, 
Oceaned immeasurably in time and space, 

Breeds, for a while, 
On its mapped round the swarming human race 
Born yesterday, ripening now, soon gone to leave 
no trace. 



Ten thousand years — 
What are they to the millions of our globe? 

Or these to spheres, 
Ancient of glimmering, thought may hardly probe? 
The scintillant shuttles driven of one transcendent 
robe ! 



126 



Poems of Meditation 



How scant the time 
Since man was but a bleared and caverned thing, 

Nature's last crime! — 
Furtive before a clawed world's snarl and spring; 
His one mean hope the craft to lure and lurk and 
sting! 



Who could have dreamed 
That such an abject bore miraculous power 

To search the beamed 
Souls of far systems in their subtlest flower; 
To make heaven fire his lamp, to enthrall, create, 
uptower ? 



That cabined soul 
Harbored all gracious and beneficent bloom 

Yet to unroll : — 
Aurelius' kindliness in joy or gloom; 
The radiant love of Christ, dear conqueror of the 
tomb! 



More deep and wide, 
We trust what few have felt mankind shall feel 

In full flood-tide, 
Far mightier mastery hurrying years reveal, 
Splendor on splendor throng and glorious peal on 
peal. 



127 



Legends of the New World 



It ends not here: 
Orbs die, force dies not with the dying sun. 

Blot out our sphere, 
Her strange magician, all the crowns he won: — 
Elsewhere in widening wave his soul sweeps on 
and on. 



Our regal kind 
Repeats its history in each earthborn frame, 

Each wakening mind. 
Deft fingers trace the thread, the windings name 
Of that long labyrinth dim, wherethrough our be- 
ing came. 



Even so thy spirit 
Full right of prophecy from the glory of all 

Must here inherit.* 
Shall Man ride triumphing o'er thy funeral pall? 
One are we, many in one, alike to soar or fall. 



Through the dread veil 
Man brought compassion, aspiration, joy, 

All seeds of bliss or bale, 
The conscious dominant will of high employ — 
Can that same veil have power to fuse, corrode, 
destroy? 



128 



Poems of Meditation 



We know the stream 
Is of the fount and ocean cloud and rain : 

Each drop, agleam, 
Bears the same essence to the welcoming main, 
Thence on aerial wings to the blue hills again. 



What there we found 
Shall still await us : all diviner pleasure 

Grows from God's ground — 
Heaven-conquering love and life in bounteous 

measure, 
Strength for the weary will, high hope's unending 
treasure. 



Seek not to cast 
The horoscope of evil, nor to find 

In aeons vast 
Its awful parentage, yet undivined, 
Across our world it writhes with greatening good 
entwined. 



This yet abides, 
Faith, hope are justified of earth and heaven. 

Through battering tides 
Bear sturdily on, though baffled seven times seven, 
Clasp hands, thrill hearts, work out the poisonous 
leaven. 



129 



Legends of the New World 



Man is a bark, 
Freighted with clinging weeds and glorious flowers, 

Steered between dark and dark. 
Grand though our heritage far more subtly ours 
Is the proud task to tend those ever-blossoming 
bowers. 



We prate of eld, — 
Is it so far a cry to Olivet? 

Who hath beheld 
Is recent, and the seers are with us yet, 
On life's translucent shell their eager vision set. 



The light divine 
In perfect clearness man may never know. 

From some hid shrine 
It pours, empurpled by cathedral glow, 
Or soiled and cloudily dim, or riven in sparkling 
flow. 



Let none arraign, 
With drear philosophy, the source of things: 

Through grief and pain, 
Through all the sordidness our tangle brings 
Turn to that conquering light with healing on its 
wings. 



130 



Poems of Meditation 



LOOKING BEYOND 

From the world-web that baffles and blesses, 

Wind-woven and flaunting, 
From the greenwoods' gay dainty caresses, 

Too careless for taunting, 

O eddy-worn life that stirs deep 

To discolor the stream 
Look forth to the calm beyond sleep 

The great vision no dream. 

THE WORLD 

Lo, the manifold surges of hills 

Overtufted with leaves; 
The cell-swarms where man labors and thrills, 

The bright ocean he grieves 

With slant wing, or trails pennon sky-sped, 

Over dimples or foam; — 
Leagues below him the grey haunted bed, 

High above, the clear dome! 

How the globe hurtles on, spinning round, 

A tumultuous will ! 
Yet we see not, we hear not a sound — 

So triumphantly still! 



131 



Legends of the New World 



Warm tilth-chequered slopes, cavern gloom, 

Ringed islets, barbed spires, 
Pale tangles of temple and tomb, 

Forest-veiled from sun-fires, 

Blind reaches of desert, rich plains, 

Rock-talons, earth-scars, 
Fire mountains, the scrolled river veins, 

Whirling under the stars ! 

Oh multiform world-home of ours 

Of pictorial glow, 
Bathed round by the rhythm of strange powers 

In continual flow; — 

Of the million-fine, billion-fine thrills, 

Which are lightning and light ; 
Which can peer through quick flesh or ribbed hills 

Or bridge space in thought flight! 

THE SUN 

Oh world-home flung free, tethered sure, 

Which must go as it came; 
Voyaging round, while long ages endure, 

A sphered sea of wild flame: — 

Swollen, struggling abyss beyond thought, 

Outlancing blue blaze, 
Whirled cavernous fury inwrought, 

Living veil of fierce haze. 

132 



Poems of Meditation 



Oh terrible mother of all 

Thou liest in wait, 
As the kraken in coralline hall, 

As the hunger of hate ! 

Yet thy glare of destruction is quelled 

To the light of our life, 
And our genialist comfort upheld 

By thy furnace of strife. 

Benignant, far-bearing thy brood, 

On an errand unknown, 
Through the void with keen pulses endued, 

Thou hast sped, thou art thrown. 

STARS AND NEBULAE 

Oh wonders of globe-life unfurled, 

Which were ours, or may be, 
Through the high panorama onhurled 

As we flee, as we flee ! 

Cloud-eddies impearled in dream-fire, 
That weave arms and strew spray; 

White cores ringed by circlet and spire, 
Flinging far the broad day; 

Moist worlds budding forth in weird forms, 

That sway high or crawl low; 
Steam-welter of seas in hot storms, 

The upburst and red flow; 



133 



Legends of the New World 



Twin-helmeted worlds of cold sheen, 

Crystal mountains upthrown. 
Grim ice-walls that close on the green 

Life-abounding mid-zone : 

Plume-portents; rained javelin-fire; 

The wild birth of new stars; 
Coil-dances of flame-worlds; the dire 

Whirl-wreck of heaven-wars. 

THE VISIBLE UNIVERSE 

Faint pin-points of ultimate spheres, 

Which are gulfs of mad glow, 
Dwindling down through black space and dead 
years, 

In their lightning-swift flow. 

Enormous, unthwarted, unknown, 

Yet all woven in one 
Miraculous web, which alone 

Binds sun unto sun! 

But the blackness that whelms and affrights — 

Unwinged of spirit, untrod ? — 
Round the fire-fly swarm of lights 

In the awful hall of God. 

Here in their shimmering gleams 

Are we set as a test or a show. 
Or like children weaving in dreams 

What we may not know. 



134 



Poems of Meditation 



FOR THE SPLENDOR OF THE WORLD 

For the splendor of the world 

Let us still thank God : — 
For the banners unfurled 

In the glorious march of even; 
For the quivering eyelids of heaven 
And the lightning's javelin rod; 
Rainbows and sunbright showers, 
Cloud-foam that topples and towers 
And the wild-sown welcome of flowers — 
All ours! 
And of God. 

For earth's kind solace and cheer, 

The wind's light hand, 
Waver of bird-song anear 

Through the luminous leaves 
For the spell that the twilight weaves 
O'er the drowsy land ; 
For the still lake under the moon, 
Brave clash of the surf in the noon, 
And the blithe dawn carolling soon — 
Rare boon, 
At His hand. 



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Legends of the New World 



For the pageant floating far, 

God's tapestry! 
Drama of spirit and star 

And strange transfiguring gleams: 
For all the wonder of dreams 
And gracious memory. 
For the saga-tale of our race 
And Fantasy's fairy face, 
For the finer diviner grace, 
That can trace, 
Even Thee. 

For human fellowship 

More than all, thank God! 
For the brotherly hand and the lips 
Of dear delight; 

For the love that can scale Heaven's height 
Yet seek the sod 
And nestle warm, which hath scope 
To wing the Abyss, under cope 
Of awful curtains — which ope 
To our hope, 
Thank God! 



136 



Poems of Meditation 



HERITAGE 

Only a feminine clerk 

With a spirit composedly furled; 
Yet she wears about her work 

The mystery of a world. 

Body and hope and thought, 

Tissue of heart and brain, 
Daintily life-inwrought, 

Are but memories waking again. 

Eyes of our earlier west 

Beam from her here and now ; 

Some forayer's frown unblest 
Fades between brow and brow; 

The waves in her hair are the gift 
Of the bride of a Baltic hold ; 

There's a sway of her head and a lift 
That were learned on the cloth of gold. 

It was yestermorn she wept, — 

They were ancient cave-dweller tears : 

And the love in her heart that leapt 
It has numbered ten thousand years. 

Magic of ages astir, 

Working through dimness of doom, 
Born to new being in her — 

Unknowing, enchanted, abloom! 
137 



Legends of the New World 

Daughter of all we have won, 
Mother of all we shall be, 

Under the shade or the sun 
Let her go laughing and free. 



138 



Poems of Meditation 



THE VOYAGE OF ST. BRANDAN 

(an allegory) 

Faint and far sang the headland bell, 

The cross was a span-long rod; 
And he said: "I am going away, away, 

From the very name of God." 

The pearl moon rose and the great sun sank, 

And clouds in the wake hove up ; 
And he drank full life from the stiffening breeze 

The wine of the ocean cup. 

But ever from out the racing rack 

He saw the long arms reach, 
And the lightning drove like a spear that's flung 

By the foiled from a hostile beach. 

And the fine fringe curled and the brown depth 
swirled 

In the likeness of cowl and stole, 
And the muttered breath of the tempest's wrath 

Was a curse on a fleeing soul. 

And still as the cloud-doors opened wide 

With the crash of a mighty strife 
White-hot within shone the grapple of sin 

And the thrust at a brother's life. 



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Legends of the New World 



And he heard the sound of a mighty wail 
And a clamor of "God!" and "Christ!" 

And he said: "The faith that is bought by crime 
I hold it is dearly priced. 

"Were there One above in whose heart of love 

All living things are borne 
How could He share in the wrongs that wear 

His name as a crest of scorn? 

"Then those may kneel who fear to stand 

And those who know may pray; 
But I from the very name of God 

Am going away, away." 

Still in the van of the driving storm 

His sail untattered spread, 
And far through the spume of the churning seas 

To the west and south he sped ; 

While glutinous strings like pennons clung 

To taffrail and mast and shroud; 
And the sea was air and the air was sea, 

One with the dipping cloud. 

And eyes were turned on the form that spurned 

The fetters of all control; 
They read in the lines of his settled brow 

The strength of a steadfast soul. 



140 



Poems of Meditation 



But the blast ft died and the swoFn waves sank 

Under a burning sky; 
And they called aloud with a sudden voice : 

"Back or we surely die! 

"For all men know of the slanting mere 

Whence none may climb to flee 
And the deadly hiss of the boiling waves 

And the isles where the monsters be." 

"Be calm," he said, "for the falsest thing 

Is the thing that all men know; 
In your own soul look for the monsters dire 

And Hell with its evil glow." 

Then out of the heart of the hot, hot south 

A cooling breath there came 
As the twilight air blows chill and rare 

From the west with its gloried flame. 

Up from the sea as in olden tales 

An island seemed to rise, 
And they saw thereon the strangest sight 

Was ever beneath the skies ; 

For the light waves beat at the very feet 

Of walls as the crystal clear, 
Through buttress and tower showed trees in flower 

And vales that were full of cheer. 



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Legends of the New World 



The rampart-fretting was like the setting 

Of gems on a frosted pane, 
And spire on spire rose high and higher 

Like the forms of a freezing rain. 

Far through a gap, in the land's soft lap 

A city of snow saw they, 
With pillar and dome and hall and home 

By the curve of a noble bay. 

Then a barge put forth like the casket-couch 

That floats for an Asian king, 
Velvet-flushed as the sun-storm fringe 

And pearled like a golden ring. 

There were seated forms, there were robes of state, 

But never a helm or oar; 
With scarce a motion and never a sound 

They flew like a gleam from shore. 

The chief stepped down with an eager brow 

And they spake in courtly wise; 
And he called : — "Farewell till I bring you word 

From the queen of the awesome eyes." 

• • • • • 

They watched adream for a night and a day ; 

Back to the ship he came: 
And he cried: "This land is a brimful bowl 

Of wonders no tongue can name. 



142 



Poems of Meditation 



"The seasons' law that we held in awe 

Is a vassal of sure control, 
And the isle is free from the blasting fires 

That rage in the human soul. 

"Her palaces fair are fine as air 

And they sink or rise at will, 
The gentlest word grows a sound that is heard 

At a league-length gathering still ; 

"The night hath doffed its solemn mask 

And shines like a keener day, 
And every bird in a lifelong spring 

Chanteth its matin lay: 

"And every soul in field or town 

Lives only to do or know; 
Not a quaver of prayer is in all the air 

Nor a hint of an inner woe. 

"Ah, here at last is the happy land 

That knows not God nor strife; 
For I asked the wise and they answered all: 

1 'Tis an old word brought to life.' 

"And I asked the queen in her height of pride 

Never a word said she: 
But she turned her eyes with a sudden chill 

On the Nothing back of me. 



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Legends of the New World 



"Yet she draws my heart and she bows my soul 
With the spell of those sundown eyes; 

And her form sways rare as the waves of air 
In the curves of her fine surprise. 

"For the only thing that can stir the string 

Of her harp of joy and power 
Is some new key to the mystery 

Of the world's locked force and flower." 



A second day he was borne away. 

Back to the*deck he came. 
But his head hung low as of one who felt 

A burden of doubt or blame. 

"They have drawn from the lungs of earth, " said he, 

"The glow of her fervid breath; 
And they warm their food by the self-same fire 

That mothers the molten death. 

"In the upper earth you may see them float, 

Navies of thistledown: 
Faster than wind through the wind they shear, 
And sink or rise with never a fear 

Myriad winglets brown. 

"They have melted earth into finest fire 

And hunted each atom home, 
The fine thrilled units of soil and star 

Spray-mist and marble dome. 



144 



Poems of Meditation 



"But every face in line and hue 

Is like as a brother's son; 
And they live in thought and they walk with care 

Wearily every one. 

"The smallest child that e'er I met 

Had a face beyond all mirth ; 
He jotted me down with his wrinkling brow 

Like the wisest of the earth. 

"I sought a sage and I asked him 'Whence?' 

He sighed and shook his head. 
I asked him 'Why?' and 'Whither?' and 'How?'— 

'They are idle words,' he said. 

"And I see small gain of their patient pain 

But a marvel and passing show: 
For link by link they have neared the brink 

Of the all that they can know. 

"And I heard a sound of anguish dire, 

A stifled, piteous cry, 
As of one outborne from the face of man 

While the queen went smiling by." 

Yet another day was he borne away: 

A third time back he came. 
But his cheeks were red as the sun's sea-bed 

And his eyes had a wrathful flame. 



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Legends of the New World 



He cried: — "There's a doom on the hollow isle ; 

There's a curse on the queen of ill : 
Direr than woes that are wrought by zeal 

Are the works of the heart that is chill. 

"Her form has the motion of mist on ocean 
When a light wind fans and sings; 

And every limb will sway and swim, 
Till you look for angel wings. 

"But a father bent o'er his child that was dead ; 

The mother sat like stone; 
And through the stillness I seemed to hear 

Their hearts in a pleading moan. 

"I turned away; but the wise men bowed 

With a student's eager will, 
The tremor of pain through nerve and brain 

Tracing with subtle skill. 

"Quoth one: 'This stir is of olden blood, 

How slowly its ripples die!' 
But the dread queen smiled: 'It is more to me 

Than the message of field or sky. 

" 'For tree or star, be it near or far, 

We shall surely have for aye ; 
But this must pass, like the breath on the glass, 

As the race grows wise and grey.' 



146 



Poems of Meditation 



"Yet I felt the power of her twilight eyes 

And the spell of her soulless will; 
And I walked at eve with her full-browed train 

In the woodlands bright and cool. 

"So we passed anear the shadowy home 
Where the stricken must live or die ; 

And one crawled forth in the vivid light 
And raised his hand on high. 

"We shrank from the gleam on his bony brow 
And his tongue that toiled to speak: 

But she kneeled her down and she peered and pried 
With the poise of a vulture beak. 

"Under the peer of those wistful eyes 

The poor life fluttered and fled. 
She rose with a sigh : 'I can learn no more 

From the dying than from the dead.' 

"Then warm and white in a wingless flight 

A grander presence came; 
And he towered midway in the path we trod, 

While the pale queen shrank in shame. 

"His voice had the swell of a warning bell, 

And the forest's midnight moan, 
And the mighty march through groin and arch 

Of the organ's deepening tone. 



H7 



Legends of the New World 



"But the frailest flowers, as in summer showers, 

Brightened beneath his tread; 
And the timid wings that the forest hides 

Hovered about his head. 

"The boughs were thrilling, the leaves distilling 

A dew of odorous balm; 
The earth was full of a happy dream, 

The air of a holy calm. 

"So I left the queen and her barren lore — 

Let us leave them all for aye. 
And out o'er the waste to the isles of God 

We will sail away, away." 



148 



Poems of Meditation 



THE BURDEN OF 1898 

(A PRODUCT OF THE SPANISH WAR) 

Out of the waste — do ye hearken? — the cry of the 
crucified ! 

Man for whom men have suffered, man for whom 
One hath died ! 

O ancient river of anguish! O hurrying, harrow- 
ing tide! 

Bitter its demon fountain boiled through Arabian 
sand, 

Pale hung the Crescent o'er it, glimmered the sor- 
cerer's wand; 

And the livid waters of cursing parted to blast the 
land; 

On Pyrenees and Carpathians lapping with sullen 

swell ; 
And ever the fields of their whelming sicken beneath 

the spell: 
Ebbing and flowing, they lingered; and they left 

the spume of Hell. 

Frenzy of blood ecstatic, thronging the torture- 
ring; 

Venom of traitorous heart, death-mined for the 
midnight spring ; 

Awful horror of soul that can jeer at the famish- 



ing! 



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Legends of the New World 



Proud of her leprous purple, crowned with her 

shameless shame, 
One by the Portal waiteth scourge upon scourge 

of flame; 
One by Levantine waters — and the sin and the 

doom are the same. 

Waken thou murdered Inca, for the hour that was 
theirs is thine! 

Ye haggard spectres of Zeeland, cheer by the north- 
ern brine! 

O multitudinous voices triumph around her shrine! 

Most august powers of repression, be wise as the 

yielding sod. 
Have ye not seen in the heavens the quivering 

vengeful rod? 
Take heed to the spear that is driven by the visible 

arm of God. 



150 



Poems of Meditation 



WAITING FOR DAY 

(in the bad times after 1893) 

O that all pens were sunshine! — for our land 

Has had enough of gloom, enough of woe. 
Keep horrors for high noon; let all things banned 

Abide the solvent of that jovial glow. 
But now, as with wide questioning eyes we stand 

Uncertain of the east, where come and go 

Faint hues, though marvellous welcome, and, too 
slow, 
By dawn's far breath our wearying brows are 

fanned, — 
O now, if ever, lure the morning on 

Or bring again the joy of yester eve 
When through the tremulous leafery the sun 

Its web of glory o'er the wall did weave, 
That these dull skies may feel the benison, 

And we, remembering, with strong heart believe. 



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Legends of the New World 



WALT WHITMAN 

Athlete of Paumanok, whose strenuous line 

Has clasped a continent with stained arm, 
Thou art not of to-day nor years that shine 

With the soul's promise and the spirit's charm. 
The rosy white-limbed pagan days were thine 

When men found godhead in the gracious form; 
And, garlanded, came dancing round the shrine, 
Or led the bounding choir in nudity divine. 
Restored in thee the very soul we scan 

Of that blithe-blooded rare boy-bather's land : 
The glad fond kinship with all nature's plan ; 

Keen eyes, free breath, the comrade-clasping hand, 
And the strong sympathy with man as man, 

Whole-hearted and invincible and grand. 



152 



Poems of Meditation 



TRANSVAAL 

(A SOUVENIR OF THE BOER WAR) 

The soul of Leyden is alive again! — 

The champion of the north-sands, reared among 
Mist-swollen cape and river-netted fen 

And slippery isles of Zeeland ; he who swung 
His wide arms through the tempest; in whose ken 

Slumbered the golden cities ; he who wrung 

The brown sea-walls asunder, and who flung 
The combed waves as a missile, homes of men 
And emerald expanse whelming; whose clear eye 
Mirrored the lights of freedom ere the sky 

Flushed with their dawning; whose unconquered 
brow 

Rose o'er the turmoil, as it rises now 

Bastioned by Afric mountains, to endow 
Man with a godlike power to live and die. 



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Legends of the New World 



LARK AND NIGHTINGALE 

From that old dreamland over the great sea 
Two airy voices ever float to me 

Here in this mythless noonday world of ours, 
Singing of ivied ruin, elfin tree, 

And winding lanes abloom with hedgerow flowers. 

Rare are the warblers of our western bowers, 
But ye are magic and a mystery. 

Unreal ye seem as Oberon's tricksy powers 

Or Queen Titania's smile through glistening 
showers. 
I love our paean, many-toned and strong 

Welcoming the sun, the lone dove's mournful 
cry, 
Our robin's vesper hymn, the mock-bird's throng 

Of riotous music; yet before I die 
Would hear the soul of twilight breathed in song, 

The voice of dawn athrilling from the sky. 



154 



Poems of Meditation 



EDGAR POE'S GRAVE 

Chill the nook beside the barren street, 
Walled from man but open to the sky. 
O'er the stone the cloudy shadows fleet; 
Clings the mist, a pallid winding sheet ; 

Death and life have met eternally. 
Still the pageant troops before his eye, 

Who abode in starlit mystery. 
Wayward spirit of the haunted glen, 
Tuneful wanderer of the midnight blast, 
Doomed awhile to dwell with mortal men 

Singing phantom kindred as they passed, 
Airy harp with notes beyond our ken, 
Subtle, pure, our one unearthly pen, 

Come what may the foremost and the last 



155 



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